
Class _ii_Lii_ 

Boole lW-^-- 

GfyrigMl^^ 

COPVR!G!IT DEPOSSR 



Digitized by the Internet Arcinive 
in 2010 witii funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.arGhive.org/details/newmapofafriGa1900gibb 



/ 



//?/.</ 



THE 
NEW MAP OF AFRICA 



THE 
NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

(1900-19 1 6) 

A HISTORY OF EUROPEAN COLONIAL 

EXPANSION AND COLONIAL 

DIPLOMACY 



BY 
HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS 

Ph.D., F.R.Hist.S. 

author of "the new map of europe," "the foundation of 
the ottoman empire," "paris reborn," etc. 




NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 

1916 



rum 



Copyright, 1916, by 
THE CENTURY CO. 



Published, November, igi6 



L 



>CI,A445G;J2 
O-v-o I X 



JAMES GORDON BENNETT 

whose lifelong interest in 
what before his day was 

" The Dark Continent " 

HAS been an important factor 

in dispelling THE 

darkness. 



Semper aliquid noui Africam adferre. 



Greek proverb, quoted by 
Pliny, Hist. Nat. viii. §42 



NOV 14 1916 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Great Britain in the Sudan . . i 
II. The Islands of Africa ... 31 

III. The Last Years of the Boer War 

AND the Period of Reconstruction 

in South Africa .... 43 

IV. The Two Independent States: 

Liberia and Abyssinia . . . 92 

V. British Policy in Somaliland . 106 

VI. The Colonial Ventures of Italy . 115 

VII. Algeria and Tunis: the Nucleus of 

the French African Empire . 130 

VIII. The Belgians in the Congo . . 147 

IX. The First German Colony: South- 
west Africa - . . . • 1 73 

X. The Heritage of Livingstone and 

Rhodes . . . . . 189 

XI. The British in East Africa and 

Uganda . . . . . 206 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XII. The Germans in East Africa . . 228 

XIII. The Problem of the Portuguese 

Colonies 244 

XIV. The British in West Africa . . 276 

XV. The Germans in West Africa. . 299 

XVI. The French in West Africa and the 

Sahara . . . • . . 312 

XVII, French Penetration into Central 

Africa 335 

XVIII. European Rivalry in Morocco before 

Algeciras 355 

XIX. France Gets Morocco . . . 374 

XX. Egypt under the Last of the Khe- 
dives ...... 391 

XXI. Egypt Becomes a British Protecto- 
rate ...... 421 

XXII. The Creation of the South African 

Union ..... 441 

XXIII. The Rebellion in South Africa and 

ITS Aftermath .... 454 

XXIV. The Conquest of the German 

Colonies ..... 470 



CONTENTS ix 

PAGE 

XXV. African Problems for the Peace 

Conference 481 

Index 493 

MAPS 

FACING PAGE 

, I. Africa at the Outbreak of the 

War . . . . . Title-page 

II. Africa about 1850 . . . . -32 

^III. Africa in 1902 . . . .64 

. IV. The Mediterranean Coast of Africa 128 

V. Sketch Map Showing the German- 
French Boundaries in 1912 . . 360 

, VI. The South African Commonwealth 448 



FOREWORD 

WHEN The New Map of Europe was written, 
at the beginning of the war, I had to 
forego deahng in a comprehensive way 
with colonial questions. Only the facts, concerning 
^European expansion in Africa that seemed to have 
direct bearing upon the diplomatic history of the 
ten years preceding August i, 19 14 could be in- 
cluded. But what has happened — and what has 
not happened — in Africa during the past two years 
revealed to me the necessity of reviewing the fifteen 
years of colonial development, effort and rivalry 
of European states in Africa, if I wanted to have a 
clear understanding of the forces that had driven 
Europe to war, of the issues that the war was bring- 
ing into clear light, and of the problems that would 
confront the Peace Conference. 

The facts for a book on European colonization in 
Africa I had been gathering for years. But I had 
no idea until now how important these facts were, 
and how essential a knowledge of them was to the 
student of contemporary European history. This 
book has been written not at all in the way originally 
planned, but with the illumination that has come 
through more than two years of living in the midst 
of the great conflict and writing daily upon its 

xi 



xii FOREWORD 

various phases. However radically and vehemently 
readers may differ from interpretations and conclu- 
sions, I hope none will feel it a loss of time to go 
with me through these pages that narrate the evolu- 
tion of Africa from the Boer War to the completion 
of the conquest of the last German colony by General 
Smuts and the combined British, Belgian, and Portu- 
guese armies in the autumn of 191 6. 

I trust that none will think lightly of my work 
because it is not accompanied by footnotes and a 
bibliography. Primary sources are the govern- 
mental "papers, " containing texts of treaties, official 
correspondence and reports, consular reports, parlia- 
mentary speeches and debates ; bulletins and reports 
of proceedings of chambers of commerce and other 
organizations interested in African colonization for 
economic, financial, political, scientific, and socio- 
logical reasons; and, occasionally, newspaper compte- 
rendus of interviews and speeches. The books I 
have consulted are legion. The more important 
ones can be found in the bibliographical lists after 
each colony in the Statesman's Year Book. To the 
summaries of events from year to year in the London 
Annual Register, I gratefully acknowledge constant 
indebtedness. For the first half of my period, these 
illuminating annals were written by Mr. H. Whates, 
Statistics are taken from the Statesman's Year Book; 
French, German, Belgian, and Italian publications 
that come under the head of primary sources men- 
tioned above; Augustin Bernard's Le Maroc, Angel 
Marvaud's Le Portugal et ses colonies, and A. P. 
Calvert's German African Empire. I have made 



FOREWORD xiii 

use also of my own correspondence to the New York 
Herald and the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph. 

I want to express my keen appreciation of the 
hospitahty and precious help I received during a 
visit to Africa in war time from H. H. Hussein Ka- 
mil, G.C.B., Sultan of Egypt; General Sir Reginald 
Wingate, G.C.B., G.C.V.O., etc., Governor- General 
of the Sudan; Sir Henry McMahon, G.V.C.O., 
K.C.I. E., etc., H. M.'s High Commissioner for 
Egypt; General Sir John Maxwell, K.C.B.,K.C.M.G., 
etc., Commanding the British Army . in Egypt; 
Hussein Rushdi Pasha, Prime Minister of Egypt; 
Col. E. E. Barnard Pasha, C.M.G., Financial 
Secretary of the Sudan; Ronald Storrs, Esq., Oriental 
Secretary to the British Agency; Arakel Nubar Bey, 
French Secretary to H. H. the Sultan; Major G. B. 
Symes, D.S.O., Private Secretary to H, E. the 
Governor-General of the Sudan; Gerald Delany, 
Esq., Renter's Manager at Cairo; J. Edgar, Esq., 
sometime Professor in Cape Town University and 
later Editor of the Johannesburg Star; and Walter 
Harris, Esq., of Tangier, Times Correspondent in 
Morocco. Mr. Edgar and Mr. Harris were good 
enough to submit to the imposition of lengthy 
questionnaires on South African and Moroccan 
history, in which they have played an active and 
important r61e. Many a glimpse into the inside 
history of Egypt did I get from Artin Pasha, last of 
the "elder statesmen" of Egypt, who went over 
with me the books of Lord Cromer, Lord Milner, 
and Mr. Dicey, and gave me a copy of his own work 
on the Sudan. 



xiv FOREWORD 

To Mr. James Gordon Bennett and Mr. Rodman 
Wanamaker I owe the privilege of a visit to Africa 
in the early months of 191 6, and to Boghos Nubar 
Pasha continuous and hearty encouragement to 
undertake work in a field where his knowledge and 
life-long experience make that encouragement worth 
more than can be estimated. 

Herbert Adams Gibbons 

Villa El Farn, rue des Dunes 

HouLGATE, Calvados, Normandy. 

October, 1916. 



THE 
NEW MAP OF AFRICA 



The New Map of Africa 



CHAPTER I 
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

AFTER the failure of the Khartum Relief Expedi- 
tion and the death of General Gordon, the 
' British Government ordered Egypt and the 
British army to drop the Sudan. The whole Gordon 
and Sudan literature, which requires a separate bibli- 
ography and is filled with sentimentalism, misrepre- 
sentations, and party prejudices, is the historical 
monument and record of the activity of Englishmen 
at home and their interest in the problem of the Sudan 
during the decade that followed the shameful fiasco of 
1884. The Gordon legend alone was in the mind of 
the Britisher who never left his tight little island, 
and who considered that fact a kind of virtue. The 
Mahdi reigned supreme in the Sudan, and after his 
death, his successor, the Khalifa, continued to exter- 
minate the tribes of the upper tributaries of the Nile. 
Fpr all British Cabinets and the British public seemed 
to care, the dervishes were welcome to keep the 
Sudan, and the early eighties were "past history." 

I 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

But some Englishmen did care and did not forget. 
In fact, there was never a moment that the thought of 
the eventual reconquest of the Sudan and of the re- 
trieving of the honor of British arms was not before 
them. They had the vision. They lived with eyes 
fixed on the goal. The uninitiable never look back 
of events to their causes. To them whatever of 
fortune through achievement falls to the other 
fellow is "luck." They believe that Lord Cromer 
blundered to fame through twenty-five years of hit 
and miss in Egypt, and that Lord Kitchener was 
"made" by the battle of Omdurman, "after all, you 
know, an easy butchery of crazy fanatics who had 
no chance at all against his superior v/eapons." 

The battle of Omdurman on September 2, 1898, 
which made possible the reconquest and redemption 
of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the foundation of 
its present splendid government, was the culminat- 
ing event of more than ten years of herculean ef- 
fort on the part of a handful of men whose 
enthusiasm was fortunately matched by their fore- 
sight, patience, and ability. The victory won at 
Omdurman was the beginning of a new era for the 
British Empire in Africa and throughout the world. 
History will give to those v/ho worked for it and 
those who won it credit for far more than the 
rehabilitation of the Sudan. 

British colonial administrators have succeeded in 
building an empire in spite of, rather than with the 
help of, their Government and the great mass of their 
fellow-countrymen. Problems confronting them in 
their field of action have never been more difficult 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

than the problem of getting and keeping support 
from home. London is the bete noire of the English 
official overseas. Cablegrams from home cause more 
trouble than native uprisings. In regard to foreign 
policy, Conservative and Liberal Cabinets are very 
much the same. They are guided by the fears and 
the hopes of General Elections, and they hate hke 
poison : 

1. To spend the British taxpayer's money over- 
seas. 

2. To sanction any policy that is likely to cause 
fighting in which British troops must be engaged. 

3. To offend the nonconformist conscience. 

Colonial administrators who keep in mind con- 
stantly these three points, and who plan to get result? 
without coming into conflict with the Government ou 
any one of them, succeed in making for themselves 
great careers, and gain honors, if not peace of mind, 
Those who do not keep these points in mind never get 
very far in a colonial career. 

This is why the reconquest of the Sudan needed a 
decade of preparation. There was never any hope 
at all of convincing the British public of the necessity 
of pouring out blood and treasure to get back to 
Khartum. Unwillingness to pay the price had been 
the cause of the debacle of 1884. The only other 
possible way of accomplishing what they had in 
mind was to put Egypt upon a sound financial basis, 
and to recreate an Egyptian army that knew how 
to fight and that would fight. The invasion of 
the Sudan and the winning of the battle of Omdur- 
man was possible only because Lord Cromer made 

3 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Egypt's revenues exceed her expenditures and be- 
cause Lord Kitchener got an Egyptian army into 
good fighting shape. When this was accomplished 
— and not before then — it could be pointed out 
to London that Egypt could contribute both in 
men and money very substantially to an expedition 
against the Khalifa. There had to be an appeal 
also to public opinion in England and to the 
nonconformist conscience. So for years one can 
read in Lord Cromer's annual reports the skilfully 
introduced and skilfully emphasized leitmotiv of 
the necessity to Egypt of the reclamation of the 
Sudan. Never could there be security in Upper 
Egypt until the dervishes were crushed. Never 
would irrigation projects on a large scale be justi- 
fiable or possible until the headwaters of the Nile 
were under Anglo-Egyptian control. Never would 
the African slave trafhc be stopped until the region 
from the equator to Wady Haifa was policed by 
Europeans. Common humanity and moral re- 
sponsibility also demanded the reconquest of the 
Sudan. For the native population was rapidly dying 
out everywhere because of the dervish cruelties and 
mismanagement. Last of all, from the standpoint 
of European prestige, the Italian defeat at Adowa 
must be counteracted. 

Since Egyptian money and Egyptian lives were 
largely instrumental in the reconquest of the Sudan, 
and since the legal rights to the territories it would 
comprise rested wholly upon those of the Ottoman 
Empire and the Egyptian Khedives, it was impos- 
sible — though it would have been desirable — to 

4 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

establish an English colony or a distinct Protectorate 
under direct British control. Then, too, the Sudan 
was going to look for an indeterminable period to the 
Egyptian army and the Egyptian budget for soldiers 
and money to hold, to rehabilitate, and to develop 
the vast regions which Mahdiism had so cruelly 
oppressed and ruined. And was not the principal 
reason for reconquest the political security and the 
economic advantage to Egypt through possessing 
the headwaters of the Nile? The problem was 
exceedingly delicate, owing to Great Britain's an- 
omalous position in Egypt, both from the inter- 
national and the Ottoman point of view. 

A convention signed at Cairo on January 19, 1899, 
between the British and Egyptian Governments, 
stated that the territory south of the twenty-second 
parallel of latitude was to be administered by a 
Governor-General, appointed by Egypt with the 
assent of Great Britain. The British and Egyptian 
flags were to be used together. No duties were to 
be levied on imports from Egypt, and duties on im- 
ports from other countries, by way of the Red Sea, 
were not to exceed the Egyptian tariffs. As long 
as it should be necessary, Egypt was to make good 
the deficit in the Sudan budget. But the money 
invested in the Sudan by Egypt would be considered 
a loan, upon which interest would be paid as soon as 
possible. A portion of the Egyptian army should 
serve in the Sudan, under the command of the 
Governor-General, himself an officer of the Egyptian 
army with the rank of Sirdar. So long as the na- 
tions who enjoyed the privileges of a capitulatory 

5 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

regime in Egypt did not demand the extension of the 
capitulations to the Sudan, and so long as Egypt 
remained under effective British control, such an 
arrangement, paradoxical as it seemed, was workable. 
It has worked out all right. But it is important to 
note that the exact status of the Sudan, both from 
the international and the Egyptian point of view, has 
not yet been determined. It will come up for settle- 
ment in the Peace Conference, when the affairs of 
the Ottoman Empire are liquidated, and international 
sanction is asked for the British Protectorate pro- 
claimed over Egypt since the opening of the European 
War.^ 

Once the Sudan was reconquered, Cromer and 
Kitchener still held to the policy of "sound financial 
basis" that had made the conquest possible. For 
they knew that the Home Government would take 
little interest in, and do nothing for, the Anglo- 
Egyptian Sudan unless it was demonstrated to them 
that the country could pay its way. Immediate use 
could be made of almost unlimited sums of money, 
and the temptation was great to enter upon and urge 
London and Cairo to cooperate in ambitious develop- 
ment schemes. Cromer and Kitchener were in 
complete accord in not falling into this trap, and 
when Kitchener was suddenly called away to South 
Africa, Lord Cromer was fortunate in finding in his 
successor. Sir Reginald Wingate, an administrator 
fully aware of the danger of grandiose schemes of 
rehabilitation and rapid development. The initial 
financial policy laid down by Lord Cromer in his 

' For the Egyptian point of view, see pp. 421-440. 

6 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

address to the Sudanese chiefs at Khartum in Decem- 
ber, 1900, to the effect that taxes were not to be made 
burdensome, even if communications and develop- 
ments had to wait, has been faithfully and consist- 
ently carried out. To it more than to anything else 
is due the marvelous success of the Sudan admin- 
istration. For the Sudanese have had from the 
beginning the contrast of the equitable taxation of 
the British with that which ground them down and 
ruined them under the Mahdi and the Khalifa: and 
the British Government has not been wearied and pre- 
judiced against the Sudan by unreasonable demands 
for financial support. 

The cost of the reconquest was L.E. 2,412,000,^ 
of which the British Government paid L.E. 780,000. 
More money had, of course, to be invested in rail- 
ways, in river transport, and in irrigation. The paci- 
fication of the country and the rehabilitation of its 
inhabitants depended upon means of transportation 
and the cultivation of the land. Everything had 
been destroyed or had fallen into decay during the 
years of anarchy : so all kinds of public works needed 
a substantial budget. Popular education had to be 
thought of, and the expenses of the civil administra- 
tion and a considerable military establishment pro- 
vided for. But though the financial task looked so 
formidable as to be almost hopeless, it was success- 
fully grappled with, and the country saved from con- 
cession hunters and insolvency by the adoption and 
maintenance of the conservative policy of "go slow 
and pay as you go. " 

' L.E. = Egyptian pound, approximately five dollars. 

7 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

In 1903, the Egyptian Cabinet authorized an ad- 
vance to the Sudan for railway construction of 
L.E. 1,770,000 to spread over four years. This was 
a sound financial investment. For it was soon de- 
monstrated that the increased revenue through the 
development of transportation facilities would cut 
down Egypt's contribution to the annual deficit more 
than the interest on this money. In 1906, the Su- 
dan Railway administration yielded a net profit of 
L.E. 52,000,^ and in 1907 the Sudan Government was 
able to pay to Egypt, L.E. 45,000 interest on part of 
the L.E. 3,000,000 advanced by Egypt for capital 
expenditures up to the end of 1906. The Sudan 
Government declared that it was now in a position 
to assist the development of public works in the 
Sudan. L.E. 100,000 was set aside for public works 
in 1908 and L.E. 285,000 for the purchase of rails for 
the Atbara-Khartum Railway. From January i , 1908, 
the Sudan began to pay interest at 3 per cent, on 
L.E. 1,500,000 of the debt to Egypt. The deficit in 
revenue for 1908 was only L.E. 47,000, and in 1909 the 

^ Over and over again in Africa the tremendous financial advantage 
to a country accruing from state ownership of public utilities is 
demonstrated. The Sudan, like South Africa, Egypt, and other 
countries, gets a good share of its surplus revenue from railway profits 
— a surplus that comes even though hundreds of miles of line are 
built and operated at a loss for political reasons or for the ultimate 
benefit of the people. One striking illustration of what the Sudan 
has gained from keeping its transportation out of the hands of con- 
cession hunters is found in the little Khartum-Omdurman tram, 
which plies from Khartum to the ferry leading to Omdurman. This 
tram line, carrying wholly natives, was begged for often at the 
beginning by private groups. The Government kept it, and to-day 
it brings a net profit of fifty thousand pounds per annum to the 
treasury. 

8 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

annual subvention from the Egyptian Treasury was 
reduced by another L.E. 10,000. This encouraged 
Egypt to advance L.E. 380,000 for railway extension 
and improvement, and the completion of Port Sudan 
town and harbor. In 1910, Sir Reginald Wingate 
was able to report that the entire Civil Administra- 
tion was paying its way and that the only deficit 
was on the military budget. As more land came 
under cultivation, trade would increase and the 
deficit disappear. Three years later there was a 
surplus of L.E. 40,000. The Sudan had made good. 

Exports increased thirty per cent, in 19I i, owing to 
the development of the cotton industry. In 1912, 
the creation of Port Sudan and the linking of the Red 
Sea with the Nile by railway made possible export 
without prohibitive transportation charges. Cotton, 
cattle, and sheep progressed rapidly. In 1913, the 
trade output jumped again, owing to the extension of 
the railway to El Obeid. Great Britain was supply- 
ing thirty-nine per cent, of the imports, and took 
twenty per cent, of the exports. 

It is no surprise, then, that the British Parliament 
showed itself willing to guarantee the interest on a 
loan of £3,000,000 for cotton cultivation in the Sudan. 
The Chancellor of the Exchequer explained that this 
outlay, in irrigation and railway extension, would 
develop the cultivation of cotton of the finest quality, 
greatly needed by England for the manufacture of 
her unique grades of cotton goods. 

A few months ago, I sat in the office of the Finan- 
cial Secretary at 'Khartum. Colonel Bernard is a 
type of officer one finds only in the British army. If 

9 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

he were a Frenchman, he would never have left Paris. 
If he were an American, he would be one of our 
captains of industry, with a yacht and a summer 
home at Newport or Bar Harbor, and wondering 
how he could spend his money. We occasionally get 
in our army and navy men with a genius for business : 
but they do not stay. It may be partly due to the 
fact that until the Spanish War there were no tasks 
to challenge this type of man. But it is mostly due 
to the entire difference in our social system from that 
of Great Britain. The Colonial Empire under the 
British flag has been built by men who have gone 
into Government service for reasons of caste. Among 
them there has naturally been a large number, like 
Colonel Bernard, with marked aptitude for business. 
In any other country most of these men would have 
gone into business. In England they never dream 
of such a thing. In order to enjoy the privileges 
of caste, young men of good families are willing to 
leave home and friends, to live separated from their 
own children, and to spend the thirty to forty best 
years of their life in exile. They are content with an 
occasional visit to England and with little or no 
money, if only they preserve their caste. This is 
the secret of Great Britain's world empire. The 
moment the Englishman of the upper classes con- 
siders business as honorable a vocation as Govern- 
ment service, Britain's Colonial Empire will resemble 
France's or Germany's — or will collapse altogether. 
All this passed through my head as I listened to 
Colonel Bernard explaining, budget estimates before 
him, the financial policy of the Sudan, with all the 

10 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

enthusiasm and keenness and understanding of an 
American trying to attract capital to his latest 
enterprise. 

Without the railway across the desert from Wady 
Haifa to Atbara, Kitchener's task against the der- 
vishes would have been tenfold more difficult, and the 
victory of doubtful permanent value. As the in- 
vaders proceeded to Khartum, it was essential to lay 
ties and rails with unflagging haste. Only did the 
re-occupation seem a reality and worth while when 
through railway service was established from Khar- 
tum to Wady Haifa. As the political success of the 
reconquest was wholly dependent upon its proving 
a financial success, and as serious economic develop- 
ment was out of the question so long as the route 
through Egypt was the only exit from the country, 
the first task of the Government was to connect 
the Nile with the Red Sea by railway. In 1902, 
Lord Cromer pointed this out in his annual report, 
and the following year he succeeded in getting the 
Egyptian Government to furnish the money, as we 
have seen above. After untold difficulties with 
labor, and the construction of a bridge over the 
Atbara River, the junction was completed in 1907. 
Suakim was abandoned as the terminus on the Red 
Sea, and a harbor built some miles farther north at 
a hamlet which was renamed Port Sudan. The 
Atbara railway shops were increased and improved, 
and the Sudan Government itself bore part of the ex- 
pense of remaking the line from Khartum to Atbara. 
In 1908, telegraphic communication was completed 
with Gondokoro, on the White Nile, two weeks by 

II 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

steamer south of Khartum. The Blue Nile was 
bridged at Khartum for a railway into the Gezira 
district between the two rivers. El Obeid, the ter- 
minus of this southern railway extension, was 
reached in 1 91 3. 

A glance at the map is necessary to realize what a 
tremendous territory the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 
covers and how impossible it is for the administra- 
tors of the country to pacify and civilize it com- 
pletely, much less to develop its resources, until more 
railways are built, reaching into the heart of all the 
different provinces. 

The greatest appeal to the imagination of the Brit- 
ish public in connection with the reconquest of the 
Sudan was the fulfilment of the task for which it was 
generally believed that Gordon had given his life, 
the suppression of the slave trade. Although the 
difficulty of this task was enormous, insurmountable 
even, in so far as slavery within the tribes was con- 
cerned. Lord Cromer felt it incumbent to mention in 
his report almost every year the progress of the slave 
suppression crusade. In 1903, he confessed his dis- 
appointment that the slave trade was not extinct ; in 
1904, he announced a marked decrease in the slave 
trade; in 1905, he said that it was difficult to check 
slave traffic in the Kordofan province; in 1906, he be- 
lieved that there would still be great difficulty in sup- 
pressing the slave trade; and in 1907 he attributed 
most of the trouble in Kordofan to the anti-slavery 
policy to which the Government was committed. The 
road to abolition, he remarked in his last report, "is 
a very long road, and it will take years to get to the 

12 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

end of it." Improved communications, however, 
and the advance of colonial enterprise in British, 
German, Belgian, and French equatorial colonies, 
helped to put a stop to long-distance slave-running. 
The area of operations of slave merchants has been 
gradually circumscribed until in 19 14 the official re- 
port announced that slave traffic was "almost im- 
possible" in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. 

British officials who have to deal with slavery at 
close range, however, especially the judges, consider 
this statement a bit too optimistic. Slave traffic 
can be detected and frequently punished, when it is 
carried on from district to district. But within 
tribal limits, especially if the tribes be Moslem, even 
where moral certainty of definite cases of slavery 
exists, legal evidence is hard to obtain. Where 
slavery is as established an institution as polygamy, 
decrees bind only those who dare or who want to take 
advantage of them. There are cases without number, 
also, where the slaves are ignorant of the abolition 
decree, and even if it were explained to them, they 
would not know what it meant. ^ Education is a 

^ One who has not traveled out of the beaten track has no 
more conception of the ignorance of people in uncivilized countries 
than the people of uncivilized countries have of our institutions. A 
word is meaningless — unless you can grasp the idea the word stands 
for. At the time of the proclamation of the Constitution in Turkey, 
I was traveling in Asia Minor. Everyone, Moslem and Christian 
alike, was enthusiastic about the new liberty. The Turkish word 
for liberty is huriet. Villagers who were celebrating the huriet looked 
at some photographs we had. One was a picture of an American 
missionary school building in Tarsus. They asked, pointing to the 
building, "Is this house the huriet we are so happy about? How 
wonderful!" And yet, colonial administrators are continually 

13 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

necessary prerequisite to the functioning and en- 
joying of Occidental social and political institutions. 
Enthusiasts and sentimentalists forget the fact that 
our ancestors did not evolve, support, and use these 
institutions until we conceived and desired them as a 
result of education. 

Lord Kitchener's first visit to the Sudan after the 
Boer War was to open Gordon College in 1902, when 
he was on his way to India. In his address he as- 
serted his entire sympathy with the objects of the 
college on the lines originally conceived, although he 
admitted the necessity of using public funds for the 
advancement of primary teaching. He expressed the 
hope that he would be able to return in five years and 
find that higher education was being given at Gordon 
College. ^ Although Gordon College is not as yet in a 
position to offer courses such as are given in Robert 
College at Constantinople, the Syrian Protestant 
College at Beirut, and several Indian and Chinese 
universities, it is far ahead of any institution of 

being taken to task by the people at home because a stroke of the 
pen has not immediately brought home to the natives under their 
charge "all the benefits of our civilization." 

' Lord Kitchener did not return in five years, as he hoped. But he 
visited Khartum again in 19 lo, and was promising himself a long 
tour, after he went back to Cairo as H. M.'s Agent and Consul-Gen- 
eral, when the present war broke out. Sir Reginald Wingate, writing 
to me from Khartum in June, said : " . . . I think it fell to few to get 
to know him as intimately as I did. Under his cold exterior beat a 
very warm and kind heart, but he was most successful in keeping 
this from the world. To this country he is a great loss, for I know 
his heart was in it, and he was almost worshiped by the people, from 
whom I have had hundreds of telegrams and letters of condolence 
and sympathy. " 

14 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

higher learning in Africa or Asia in the work of its 
research laboratories and in the cooperation it gives 
to the Government for the development of the 
resources of the country, the betterment of public 
health, and ethnological investigation. 

Gordon College is a State institution, which works 
with and for the Government. I wish it were pos- 
sible to speak here of the wonderful things that are 
being done by Dr. Chalmers and others in the Well- 
come Research Laboratories. It is a revelation of 
the ability and the devotion of the scientists to whom 
the manifold problems of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 
have been a challenge sufficiently engrossing to keep 
them far from the great world and yet develop their 
genius so strikingly that the great world's attention 
is continually called to what they are doing and dis- 
covering. But it is more than that. A visit to 
Gordon College and the Wellcome Laboratories opens 
one's eyes to the methods that are being pursued by 
Sir Reginald Wingate and his associates, and the goal 
they have before them. There is no highly civilized 
country in the world where more constant attention 
is being paid to means of developing resources and 
better ability being invested in the study of those 
means than in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. 

In addition to the research work of Gordon College, 
the Department of Education has established a Cen- 
tral Research Farm at Khartum North. Here field 
experiments in growing what the Sudan might pro- 
duce are tried out, and practical work is done in horti- 
culture and forestry. At Gordon College and in three 
other cities, industrial workshops teach boys trades. 

15 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

The criticism has frequently been made against the 
British administration in the Sudan as in Egypt that 
educational facilities are not as fully extended as they 
ought to be, and that the British have neglected the 
moral factor, and emphasized the material, in build- 
ing up the country. This brings up one of the most 
thorny problems that confront those who are en- 
gaged in bringing Africa and Asia under European 
control. On the one hand, in Egypt and the Sudan, 
it can be argued that there must be money before 
ambitious schemes of universal popular education 
are undertaken. Before the money can be found, the 
country must be developed economically. It is not 
that public works and material benefits are more 
essential than education, but that education for all 
is so tremendously costly that only a country whose 
resources are fully developed can maintain schools for 
its population. It is pointed out, moreover, that 
even if there were money, teachers would be lacking, 
and that it takes a whole generation to train enough 
teachers to meet even a portion of the needs of the 
next generation. On the other hand, especially in 
view of what we have said about the necessity of 
education before our Occidental social and political 
institutions can be wanted, understood, and taken 
advantage of by natives, is it not true that primary 
education is as necessary to a country's development 
as railways and irrigation, and that if the people are 
to benefit by material prosperity they must have a 
moral preparation? 

Although I have taught for some years in educa- 
tional institutions in the Near East, and have seen 

i6 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

this problem at close range in half a dozen countries, 
I do not profess to offer a solution. But we must 
make a wide and determined start in primary edu- 
cation, and that demands teachers. To get the 
teachers, higher institutions are necessary. When 
we put boys through the colleges, few of them want 
to teach or do teach. They become dissatisfied — as 
they have every reason to be — ^with existing con- 
ditions. But their patriotism does not inspire in 
them the will to make the sacrifice and to take up the 
cross individually in order that their people may be 
brought to enlightenment. Far from following the 
only possible way they have of serving their country 
wisely, they agitate for European institutions, for 
social and political recognition, judging the feeling 
and need of the race solely by their own exotic con- 
dition. The curse of our Western education upon 
Orientals is that we try to build where there is no 
foundation of character. Instead, then, of having 
wood that takes a polish, we get a veneer that cracks 
at the first test. Missionaries and educators have 
success only with boys whom they take away from 
their families and bring under their home influence 
very early in life. But they turn out young men who 
are foreigners to their own people, and who have no 
desire or ability to go back among their own people 
and impart what has been given to them. Good 
farmers and goatherds and blacksmiths and cobblers 
are spoiled to make imitation * ' gentlemen. ' ' The edu- 
cated Oriental will not work even if he is starving. ^ 

^ Several years ago I was preaching in a small inland city of Penn- 
sylvania. The local department store proprietor told me that a 
a 17 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Educating boys in trades, as the Sudan Education 
Department has started to do, is an excellent thing. 
But it ought to be done much more widely than is 
being done. And money ought to be spent more freely 
than it is being spent in primary education. The 
Sudan boasts of fifteen hundred miles of railway in 
fifteen years, and two thousand miles of regular river 
steamship service, and five thousand miles of tele- 
graph wires. But less than five thousand Sudanese 
in schools of all grades, primary to college, is not a 
very good showing, despite the difficulties. 

After the Cairo Convention was arranged between 
Egypt and Great Britain in January, 1899, the Brit- 
ish Foreign Office was in a position to treat with other 
nations and other British colonies concerning the 
boundaries of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The 
Anglo-French Convention of 1899 settled the local 
difficulties raised by the Marchand expedition to 
Fashoda. When French obstruction and ill-will 
that stood in the way during the first few years of 
reconstruction were removed by the epoch-making 
Anglo-French Agreement of 1904, the frontiers with 
Abyssinia and the Italian colony of Eritrea were 
arranged by several successive agreements. 

The only serious difficulty after Fashoda, where 

Christian Arab boy from "a college somewhere out in Turkey" was 
in town, and that he had somehow been unable to give the boy work. 
He was puzzled, for the boy seemed to be strong and husky. He 
brought him to me after church. I thumped the fellow on the 
chest and back, and, turning to the merchant, said, "Put him in 
your packing department." "Oh! no, sir," the boy cried out ago- 
nizingly, "I could not. I do not want handful work. I want mind' 
fid work." 

18 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

Great Britain had once more to justify her presence 
in the Sudan by claiming to act as agent for the 
Egyptian Government, was when the Anglo-Egyp- 
tian troops occupied, in June, 1901, certain portions 
of the Bahr-el-Ghazal region, bordering on French 
Equatorial Africa and the Congo Free State. In 
Paris and Brussels it was contended that Great Brit- 
ain had encroached upon territory leased to Belgium 
and had exceeded her rights under the Convention 
of 1894. The British counter-claim wholly de- 
pended upon "the former rights of Egypt in the 
Sudan." 

The Sultanate of Darfur, between Kordofan and 
Wadai, was placed within the British sphere by the 
Anglo-French Agreement. Sultan Ali accepted the 
British_ Protectorate, and agreed to pay a tribute. 
But his country was never made a province of the 
Sudan, like Kordofan. ^ This cannot be successfully 

^ Owing to the absence of effective control, German and Turkish 
agents were able to persuade Sultan Ali to cast in his fortunes with 
them. He paid no tribute in 1915, and in the spring of 1916 declared 
the " Jehad "[^ (holy war), stating that he had been ordered by the 
Khalif of all the Moslems to attack the Sudan. The railway to El 
Obeid made his threat of Uttle importance from the British point 
of view. But General Sir Reginald Wingate decided to anticipate the 
threatened attack, and promptly sent a column into Darfur, which 
occupied El Fashr. It was the Sirdar's object to prevent the possi- 
bility of AU making trouble for the French in Wadai: for the Elamerun 
operations had depleted greatly the Wadai garrisons, and Sultan 
Ali knew this. If the railway can now be extended from El Obeid 
to El Fashr, the last unoccupied province of the Anglo-Egyptian 
Sudan will be brought under effective administrative control, and 
the cattle trade of the Sudan will be greatly increased. Darfur, up 
to this last expedition, has been one of the few countries in Africa 
without a European garrison. 

19 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

done until the railway from Lake Chad to the Nile is 
built. Then Abeshr in Wadai and El Fashr in Dar- 
fur will be the two important points between the 
lake and El Obeid, which the Sudan Government 
railway reached in 1913. 

Very soon after the British and Egyptians went 
back into the Sudan, the problem of irrigation began 
to be studied. In 1901, Sir William Garstin reported 
on the possibility of using the equatorial lakes as 
reservoirs. Lake Victoria Nyanza was rejected be- 
cause a rise in its level would flood shores which 
were thickly populated, and half of which were 
German territory. Although the German factor may 
now be eliminated, the lake has become far more 
important than at the time of this report through the 
wonderful development of the colonies on its shores. 
It is hardly possible to believe that the opinion of 
Sir William Garstin will be revised. For the colonies 
bordering the lake would never consent to having the 
level raised and lowered for the convenience of 
the Nile territories. Lake Albert Nyanza presented 
similar difficulties, for Belgium owns the western 
shore. Then, too, the utility of irrigating the White 
Nile Valley is at the best questionable. For it 
passes through unreclaimable swamp lands for 
hundreds of miles. Irrigation in the Blue Nile 
Valley, and the free navigation of that river result- 
ing from a control of the water supply, would bring 
a rich return. Lake Tana, in northern Abyssinia, 
on the western side of Mount Gum^a, according to 
Sir William Garstin, would make an ideal reservoir. 
The surrounding country is uninhabited, and en- 

20 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

gineering difficulties are much less than in the case of 
Lake Victoria or Lake Albert. 

By her treaties with Abyssinia, France, and Italy, 
Great Britain became ten years ago politically in a 
position to carry through the Garstin scheme. It 
has not yet been done. Reports on the Sudan have 
emphasized year after year the necessity and value of 
irrigation, and in 1913, as we have seen above, the 
Imperial Parliament guaranteed a loan, part of 
which was to be spent in irrigating the Gezira district, 
on the west bank of the Blue Nile south of Khartum. 
The success of the Tayiba demonstration station, in 
this district, in raising fine staple cotton proved, just 
before the European War broke out, that this irriga- 
tion scheme was a sound proposition financially. 
A wonderful development in cotton growing may be 
expected after the plan is carried through, and cotton 
may before long surpass the gum of the Kordofan 
forests as the premier export article of the Sudan. 

In this necessarily incomplete survey of the Sudan, 
I have saved the political aspect of Sir Reginald 
Wingate's problem to the last, not because the task 
of pacification has been any less difficult or less im- 
portant than the solution of the financial problem, 
but because the extension of civil administration 
through military operations had to follow rather than 
to go hand in hand with economic development. 

The Khalifa escaped from Omdurman after the 
battle of September 6, 1898, and had to be pursued 
and put out of harm's way. When Sir Reginald Win- 
gate succeeded in killing the Khalifa and his compan- 
ions a year later, Mahdiism as a military menace 

21 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

disappeared. But the country was vast and could 
not be penetrated in a few months or even a few years. 
The only policy with any chance of success was to 
direct the efforts of the Government toward the 
speedy amelioration of the unfortunate victims of the 
dervish rule, and to win their allegiance through 
lending them a helping hand. Their memory of 
Egyptian rule was hardly of a nature to recommend 
the new Government, and Egyptian soldiers were not 
looked upon as redeemers — even from Mahdiism, to 
which many of the most influential sheiks remained 
profoundly attached as a religious dogma. The 
British administration had to make itself known, not 
by force, but by winning confidence through refrain- 
ing from exploiting the people and giving them as 
much material benefit as possible in as short a time 
as possible. This was Sir Reginald Wingate's policy, 
and I have been able to see with my own eyes the 
magic that it has worked upon people who are fanati- 
cal only if you provoke them to fanaticism, and 
savage only if you give them reason to be. From 
the very beginning of the new administration at 
Khartum, the process of pacification has been dis- 
turbed only by the ineluctable necessity of enforcing 
prematurely a too drastic anti-slavery policy. 

Not often during the fifteen years from the death 
of the Khalifa to the outbreak of the European War 
has Sir Reginald been compelled to show the mailed 
fist. In 1903, a new Mahdi arose in southern Kor- 
dofan. He was immediately pursued, captured, and 
hanged at El Obeid. The criticism from England 
against his summary execution was very hard to bear, 

22 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

even though it was inspired by sentimentaHty and 
total ignorance of the problem with which the officials 
in the Sudan had to deal. From 1884 to 1 898 Mahdi- 
ism had meant the extinction of nearly six million 
lives. ^ The only way to prevent a return to the 
most intolerable and cruel despotism the valleys of 
the Upper Nile tributaries had ever known was to 
snuff out at the beginning every pretendant to the 
Mahdi's succession. In 1908, a body of ex-dervishes 
attacked and killed the deputy inspector of the Blue 
Nile province. This was just at the time the ' ' Young 
Egypt" party was beginning to grow formidable, 
and their emissaries were working everywhere in the 
Sudan. A punitive expedition resulted in twelve 
death sentences, which were commuted to life 
imprisonment. 

The pessimism of Sir Eldon Gorst's report for 1909 
extended to his remarks on the Sudan. He declared 
that the tenth year of the occupation was full of 
tribal unrest, and that Mahdiism was not extinguished 

^ The population of the Egyptian Sudan was believed to be 
between eight and nine millions at the beginning of the Mahdi's 
reign. Five years after the reconquest, it was still less than two 
millions. In the last decade, the increase has been very rapid, so 
that, in spite of sleeping sickness in the south, it now exceeds three 
millions. The steady increase in population is the most striking 
proof of the benefit of British rule. Intertribal warfare has ceased. 
Security from raiding and Government aid in combating disease 
make cattle-raising once more profitable. There has been immigra- 
tion from Abyssinia and from West Africa. Only about four thou- 
sand Europeans are in the Sudan. Aside from the officials and their 
families, the missionaries and a very few Europeans interested in 
development schemes and archaeology, the foreigners are Greeks and 
Syrians, who lend money, engage in petty commerce, and sell spirits. 
In Khartum street signs are in Greek. 

23 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

as a faith, and had to be carefully watched and 
checked at every turn. There was also much law- 
lessness along the Abyssinian border. The most 
dangerous districts were so unhealthy that the only 
means of maintaining order was to increase the Su- 
danese battalions. In 1912, there was an expedition 
into Mongalla, and an outbreak in southern Kordof an. 
There were nine distinct military operations during 
the course of 19 14. 

If one had only reports to go by, one wotild gather 
that fifteen years of Anglo-Egyptian occupation had 
not brought peace to the Sudan. But one has to 
consider the enormous extent of the country, and the 
difficulties of communication. Punitive expeditions 
and local uprisings stand out: for they are news. 
When one reads the newspapers, he sees only reports 
of divorces. Does he argue from this that marriages 
are generally unhappy? 

; Sir Reginald Wingate was at home on a vacation 
when the European War began. He hurried back to 
his post, and there were many who said that he 
would have very severe days before him. The entry 
of Turkey into the war was expected by the Germans 
to have serious consequences throughout North 
Africa. But especially did they hope for trouble in 
the Sudan. When I was in Berlin, in December, 
1914, the collapse of British power in the Moslem 
portion of Africa and Asia was confidently prophesied. 
There was much faith in the fetish of Pan-Islamism. 

A year later, when it looked as if Germany was 
planning the invasion of Egypt on a large scale, and 
the newspapers were full of alarming reports, I 

24 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

traveled all over Egypt, and went to Khartum to 
see how matters stood in the Sudan. Although the 
Turks were reported to be moving again against the 
Suez Canal, and fighting with the Senussi was going 
on in the West, my journey of four days by rail and 
steamer south from Cairo was exactly as in time of 
peace. 

It was patent that no insurrectional movement was 
anticipated or feared by the Sudan Government. 
One-fourth of the British military and civil staff 
(there were less than four hundred in all) had been 
allowed to return home to rejoin regiments or volun- 
teer. No increase in the British effectives had been 
asked for, or was contemplated. For nearly a mil- 
lion square miles there were less than a thousand 
British soldiers. 

At the beginning of the entrance of Turkey into 
the war, the Sirdar received telegrams and letters 
from all the principal chiefs of the Sudan, expressing 
whole-hearted loyalty to the British Empire, and 
condemning the action of the Young Turks. These 
were published in a remarkable booklet called 
The Sudan Book of Loyalty. Of all who came forward 
at that time with declarations of sympathy and 
loyalty, only two have since been put under formal 
restraint by the Government for political intrigue 
with the enemy. 

Inside the Sudan there was only one revolt against 
the Government, which had to be dealt with as a mili- 
tary operation. It was that of a chieftain in the 
Kadugli district of the Nuba Mountains, who had 
been deceived by enemy agents into believing that the 

25 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

power of the British in Egypt and the Sudan was on 
the point of eclipse. He surrendered at the end of 
191 5. There have been no others, and it cannot be 
too strongly emphasized that the police and in- 
spection work in the Sudan, from the internal point 
of view, is only what is usual in time of peace. The 
Khalifa's proclamation of the Holy War left the 
Sudanese unaffected. 

Seeing is believing. The Egyptians are so unwar- 
like a race and so lacking in personal courage and 
daring that it was easy enough to discount the Ger- 
man stories about the storm that was going to break 
in Cairo. I did not have to go to Egypt to reassure 
myself on this point. But the Sudanese, from the 
blackest of blacks to the most chocolate-colored of 
Arabs, have no fear of death, and are heroes of many 
a charge, in the face of desperate odds, that surpasses 
Balaclava. The Sudanese, too, are fanatical Mos- 
lems, with all the zeal and enthusiasm that belongs 
to primitive races and neophytes. I had been living 
for years in an atmosphere where Pan-Islamism was 
the absorbing topic of conversation and the night- 
mare of my British official friends. So I needed to 
go to Khartum. 

By pure chance the trip into the Sudan was well- 
timed. I was there for the two important fetes of 
the year, the birthday of the Prophet {Muled~el- 
Nehi) and the anniversary of the visit of the King and 
Queen of England, who had stopped at Port Sudan 
on the way back from India, and held a review 
at Sinkat, on January 17, 1912. King's Day was 
celebrated by an impressive service at the Khartum 

26 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

Cathedral. After the garrison left the church, they 
stood on parade and Sir Reginald Wingate read a 
cablegram from the King. It was a stirring sight to 
see these few hundred British soldiers, the only mili- 
tary evidence of British power in the midst of war in 
one of the largest Moslem regions in Africa. 

After dinner on the evening of King's Day, Sir 
Reginald took me down into the Palace garden to see 
the Sudanese band that had been playing during the 
meal. We passed through the circle around the 
conductor, and stood in their midst while they 
played some Niam-Niam marches. The Sirdar was 
in full-dress uniform, and bareheaded. A couple of 
torches gave light. The black faces and weird music 
made me feel that I was certainly surrounded by 
savages in the heart of Africa. But they were 
savages whose affection for their big chief was evi- 
dent in the way they looked at him and the vim with 
which they played. I thought back a year, and I was 
in the Vaterland Cafe in Berlin. There was music, 
too, and I was listening to an authority on the Near 
East. "The Sudanese, you know," he said, "are 
certainly coming in with us — when they realize that 
the Sultan has raised the Green Standard. They are 
devils, and the black pagan tribes will follow readily 
the Moslems. They really hate the British rule. 
"What happened to Gordon will seem little beside 
this approaching tragedy, just as the Sepoy Rebel- 
lion will seem little compared to what is going to 
happen in India. " 

Sir Reginald Wingate asked me to go to Omdurman 
with him to the dervish celebration of the Prophet's 

27 



THE NEW MAP OP AFRICA 

birthday. We were a party of about thirty: the 
Grand Cadi, the Grand Mufti, several officers from 
the British regiment stationed at Khartum, Mr. More, 
the Civil Governor of Khartum Province, Sir Regi- 
nald's associates in the Government, and his personal 
staff. We left the Palace steps at nine o'clock in the 
evening for the trip on the Blue Nile to Omdurman. 
Our steamer was the Elfin, which was used by Gordon 
in the old days more than thirty years ago. 

At the landing-stage, about half a mile from the 
city walls, a great crowd of white-robed dervishes 
was waiting to form the guard of honor. Each 
held a flaming torch. The Sudan women, harking 
back to jungle days, greeted the Sirdar with a shrill 
cry, which they make tremolo by pressing fingers on 
their lips. Into the city past the Mahdi's tomb and 
the Khalifa's ruined palace we rode to a large open 
space, where innumerable tents were dressed for the 
celebration. The Omdurman municipality, the im- 
portant Omdehs (headmen) of the neighboring 
villages and various tribes, and the sheiks of the 
many religious orders all have their tents. With 
untiring physical energy and good humor and 
capacity for "pink lemonade" of the good old circus 
variety, which was forced upon us in every tent. Sir 
Reginald Wingate led us from place to place. No 
tent was too humble to be omitted, no sheik too in- 
significant to be passed over. One religious leader, 
who received the Sirdar as an equal on this night, is 
a cook in private life. "And a good cook, too, " the 
Sirdar told me. 

I had the good fortune to meet and talk with the 

28 



GREAT BRITAIN IN THE SUDAN 

most revered of the religious chieftains, El Sayyed 
Ali Morghani— now Sir Ali Morghani, K.C.M.G., 
for he received a knighthood from the King in the 
last birthday honors. Sir Ali is a modest, unassum- 
ing man of about forty, with a shrewd, keen mind. 
He knows what is going on in the world, for he asked 
me some searching questions about conditions in 
France and the Balkans. Sir Ali, who is revered as 
a "holy man" above all the religious leaders of the 
Sudan, has no doubt whatever of the sincere attach- 
ment of the Moslems of Africa to the cause of Great 
Britain. I think that he believes exactly what he 
told me. 

When Sir Reginald Wingate explained to the sheiks 
who I was and what I had come to the Sudan for, 
they nodded] their heads with satisfaction, and 
laughed. "Tell him to write what he sees," they 
declared. "We are glad that he came for the feast, 
for he can give the English and French and Americans 
a good report of us." 

The last tent we visited was the most important, 
and around it gathered all the people of Omdurman 
and the tribes who had come into the city for the 
festivities. Thousands of white-robed howling or 
barking dervishes were dancing and shouting, having 
reached the point of frenzy. We sat sipping coffee 
in the midst of a crowd of sixty thousand Moslems, 
most of whom had been followers of the Mahdi and be- 
lievers in the EZhalifa. The Sirdar's guard of honor 
was four Sudanese lancers on horse. There were no 
troops, either Egyptian or British. None of our 
party was armed. The people of Omdurman, at the 

29 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

moment of the greatest religious exaltation of the 
year, had here in their power the Governor-General 
and the chief representatives of British authority in 
the Sudan. 

I know what the feeling of Moslem fanaticism and 
anti-Christian feeling is in an Oriental crowd. I have 
experienced it more than once when I knew that I 
was facing death. But that feeling was not here. 
There was real love for the Sirdar — and no hostility 
to the rest of us. 

As we were leaving the tent, one of the turbaned 
dervish chieftains who had followed the Sirdar to the 
entrance, put his left hand on my shoulder as he 
shook hands, and said, "I hope you have enjoyed 
the feast at Omdurman and will come again. " 

"Who is that sheik?" I asked Sir Reginald 
Wingate. 

"One of the Mahdi's sons, " he answered. 



30 



CHAPTER II 
THE ISLANDS OF AFRICA 

THE islands around Africa are owned by- 
Portugal, Spain, Great Britain, and France, 
and the title to their possession' generally 
goes far back beyond the period of European 
colonization of the mainland. In the old days 
of sailing vessels, when the route to India was 
around the Cape of Good Hope, islands had a 
unique value. There were, of course, ports of call 
on the mainland. But they were never free from 
the attacks of the savages, and did not afford 
security for the storing of supplies. Nor did the 
mainland lend itself as well as islands to economic de- 
velopment and the spread of civilization in the days 
when colonial forces were small and colonists few. 
Europe in Africa — on the large scale of administra- 
tive possession and economic development — was 
possible only after steamships and railways had 
passed the experimental stage, and when the intense 
production of the new industrial era created surplus 
population and surplus goods for which an outlet 
must be found. Europe did not take possession of 
Africa as a result of the explorations of Livingstone, 
Stanley, Peters, de Brazza, and others. The ex- 

31 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

plorers were the pioneers of a Europe ready and need- 
ing to follow the path they blazed. 

Aside from the Madeira Islands and the Azores, 
which are administratively regarded as integral parts 
of the Republic, Portugal has the important Cape 
Verde group, the Bissagos Archipelago off Portuguese 
Guinea, and the two little islands of Sao Thome and 
Principe in the Gulf of Guinea, which are treated in 
the chapter on the Portuguese colonies. 

The Canary Islands are administratively a portion 
of the Spanish monarchy : so the minister of colonies, 
who once had under his control an Empire that only 
Britain has since been able to match, gives most of 
the attention of his department to the one rich little 
island of Fernando Po near the mouth of the Niger, 
far in the Gulf of Guinea. The only interest of this 
island, in the international scheme of things, is the 
fact that it commands the approach to the German 
colony of Kamerun, just as Zanzibar controls the 
approach to Germany's principal port in her East 
African colony. Spain has also, southeast of Fer- 
nando Po, a foothold on the mainland, called Spanish 
Guinea, which is an enclave in the Kamerun (just 
as the British enclave of Walfisch Bay controls the 
outlet of the Swakop and Kuiseb rivers in German 
Southwest Africa). Should Spain ever desire to 
part with one or all of her colonies, France has the 
treaty right of preemption. 

The British and French islands are most conven- 
iently placed along the trade routes around the con- 
tinent and across the Atlantic and Indian oceans. 

Great Britain has, beside Walfisch Bay, the wee 

32 



Canaruldi 



\^^ 



Cf> 



-5- 



CD 
CD 



EXPLO 
BUT NOl 
BY ANY 



INOEP£, 
STATE 



THE ISLANDS OF AFRICA 

HoUam's Archipelago and Possession Island off the 
coast of German Southwest Africa. The latter is 
at the northern end of Luderitzland, not far from the 
port of Angra Pequena. Huge Madagascar lies off 
the coast of Portuguese East Africa, almost parallel- 
ing the entire stretch from Lorenzo-Marquez in 
Delagoa Bay at the south to Cape Delgado on the 
north. The distance is not great from the Portu- 
guese port of Mozambique to Madagascar. In the 
southern part of the canal between Mozambique and 
Madagascar, France has the two small islands of 
Bassas da India and Isle de I'Europe. Between Cape 
Delgado, which marks the boundary of German East 
Africa and Portuguese East Africa, and the northern 
end of Madagascar, lies the Comores Archipelago, also 
belonging to France. Great Britain has Zanzibar and 
Pemba as sentinels between the German port of Dar-es- 
Salaam and her port of Mombasa. Farther out into the 
ocean, off the coast of German East Africa and north 
of Madagascar, Assumption, Aldabra, Astove, Saint 
Pierre, Providence, Cerf Islands, and the archipela- 
goes of Cosmoledo and Farquhar fly the Union Jack. 

On the way to India from Zanzibar, beyond the 
islands just named, are Mahe, Felicite, the Amirantes 
and others, which form the Seychelles. They are 
under British rule. Five hundred miles east of 
Madagascar is Mauritius, with dependent islands, 
which England conquered from France in 1810. 
In the Atlantic Ocean, on the way to South America, 
are Ascension Island, St. Helena, and the Tristan 
da Cunha group, convenient sentinels to keep the 
ocean for the British. 

3 33 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

From the standpoint of African colonial history, 
British Zanzibar and French Madagascar have alone 
influenced European colonial policy and the history 
of African colonial expansion. We can eliminate 
all the others. But brief mention must be made of 
the recent history and development of Zanzibar and 
Madagascar. 

ZANZIBAR 

Zanzibar and its small northern neighbor, Pemba, 
are, like Somaliland, connected racially, historically, 
and religiously with Arabia rather than with Africa. 
They came under the control of Muscat when the 
Portuguese Empire began to crumble. For twenty- 
five years, in the early part of the nineteenth century, 
Zanzibar was connected politically with Muscat. It 
became an independent sultanate again in 1856. 
Not until she found Germany installed on the main- 
land of Africa, north of Portuguese Mozambique, 
and France making plans for the conquest of Mada- 
gascar, did Great Britain feel impelled to get posses- 
sion of Zanzibar and Pemba. A treaty establishing 
the British Protectorate was secretly made; and 
France and Germany were confronted with a Jait 
accompli. These two Powers w^ere placated by the 
agreements of 1890. France was given a free foot 
in Madagascar: and Heligoland was ceded to Ger- 
many. France and Germany recognized the Zanzi- 
bar Protectorate: and Germany paid one million 
dollars to the Sultan of Zanzibar for his rights on the 
mainland they had occupied six years earlier. 

34 



THE ISLANDS OF AFRICA 

Since the rise of German naval power, Heligoland 
has proved of far more importance than the British 
Government ever dreamed it would be. In view 
of what has happened since the outbreak of the war 
in Europe, the British must have come to the opinion 
that the price paid for Zanzibar was pretty high. 

The importance of Zanzibar as a trading center has 
diminished in recent years through the development 
of the coast ports of French and Italian Somaliland, 
and of German and British East Africa. The Ger- 
man railway from Lake Tanganyika to the coast at 
Dar-es-Salaam is the most important factor in pre- 
venting the expansion that had been hoped for in 
Zanzibar. The total trade has for soine years re- 
mained stationary at about ten million dollars. The 
most lucrative industry of the island remains clove- 
raising. 

In 1 90 1, the old Sultan was succeeded by Ali, a 
youth of nineteen, who vacated the throne after ten 
years of an uneventful reign. During this period, 
however, British control became effective, and the 
Pan-Islamic movement brought no serious problem. 
In 1 91 3, the control of the island was handed over to 
the Colonial Office by the Foreign Office, and a Brit- 
ish resident given the title of High Commissioner. 
Zanzibar had been separated from British East Africa 
in 1904, although it had been included in the original 
charter of the British East Africa Company. 

A recent movement to bring the two Protectorates 
under one control, as has been accomplished in 
British West Africa, has not yet succeeded. The 
problem of the Indians stands in the way. Indians 

35 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

are numerous in Zanzibar. Since the abolition of 
slavery, they have become the real possessors of the 
land. As they ply the trade of money-lenders, 
the Arab farmers and planters are in their power. 
The majority of the Zanzibar Indians did not come 
directly from India, but are of South African origin. 
They left that part of the British Empire because 
they could not secure there the rights of British 
subjects. In their new home, they note the recent 
measures taken, and the new measures agitated, in 
British East Africa against Indians, and fear that 
incorporation with the mainland Government will 
once more make of them pariahs. 

'The most interesting contribution of Zanzibar to 
the experimental solution of European colonization 
problems in Africa is the method of abolition of 
slavery. It was a peculiarly advantageous field for 
the tackling of this problem. Zanzibar and Pemba 
are islands. The inhabitants are Moslems. Islamic 
law is the law of the land. Mr. B. S. Cave, British 
Agent and Consul-General, gave a valuable review 
of the successive steps of the emancipation policy 
in a report issued in 1909. It is well worth studying. 
The Sultan issued a decree in 1897, ordaining that no 
child thereafter born could be a slave, and made 
provision by which slaves could obtain freedom. In 
eleven years eleven thousand slaves were emanci- 
pated. Voluntary emancipation went very slowly 
at first. Older slaves were naturally unwilling to 
accept freedom. But the gradual process of enfran- 
chisement did not arouse Arab fanaticism; the eman- 
cipated natives did not become demoralized by a 

36 



THE ISLANDS OF AFRICA 

sudden change in their status for which they were not 
prepared ; and local industries and agriculture suffered 
scarcely at all. During that time, the general and 
local problems arising from emancipation had been 
met and examined. So the experience of eleven 
years could be used to advantage in framing a gen- 
eral emancipation decree that would neither violate 
Moslem sensibilities nor upset the economic life of 
the country. 

In June, 1909, the Sultan signed a decree forbidding 
recognition by the Courts of the status of slavery in 
the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba. Compensation 
was provided for slaves whose previous masters would 
now refuse to support them because age, ill health, or 
physical disability prevented them from earning a 
living. The rights of concubines under Moslem 
law would not be recognized, if concubines, taking 
advantage of the emancipation decree, left their 
former masters without consent. Nor would they 
have the right of custody of their children by the 
master whom they left. 

One admires the sagacity and patient wisdom of 
those who had to deal with the slave problem in 
Zanzibar. Resisting the pressure brought to bear 
upon them by thoughtless sentimentalists in England, 
and enduring misrepresentation and vitriolic denun- 
ciation on the part of those who had not the slightest 
knowledge of the subject upon which they were 
talking,^ the British administrators kept quietly 

^ The French Abolition Decree of 1896 in Madagascar was held up 
as the "only right and honorable step" for Great Britain to take. 
The two cases were totally different, of course, Zanzibar being under 

37 



THE NEW MAP OP AFRICA 

at their task. When the moment of reaHzation 
arrived, the vindication of their conservative policy 
was complete. Emancipation in Zanzibar has been 
so strikingly successful that it has given heart — and 
a potent argument — to others who are confronted 
with the same perplexing task on the mainland, and 
who have to bear all the while insult and impugnment 
of motives from cranks in England. If any one 
believes that the only way to effect a reform is to 
make it immediately and sweepingly, and that the 
British flag must mean freedom for all over whom it 
is hoisted by the very fact of its being hoisted and at 
the very moment it is hoisted, let him read Mr. Cave's 
report. 

MADAGASCAR 

Madagascar is by far the largest Island depending 
upon the continent of Africa. The area of France 
is 207,000 square miles. Madagascar's 'area is 
227,000 square miles. The population of the island, 
which is nearly a thousand miles long, is 3,200,000, 
of whom over 3,000,000 belong to the Malagasy race. 
The people are of many distinct tribes, with different 
languages. The most intelligent and numerous, the 
Hovas, number nearly a million. 

France got a foothold in Madagascar between 1882 
and 1884, at the time when Germany and Great 
Britain were feverishly putting under their flags all 
that was left up to that time on the African mainland. 

Islamic law, and the harem consideration complicating the problem. 
Some of Zanzibar's most influential chiefs, in close connection with 
Mecca, had been African slave-traders. 

38 



THE ISLANDS OF AFRICA 

' As we have seen above, after Great Britain 
seized Zanzibar, she agreed to leave a free field to 
France in Madagascar. But the Malagasy, not 
having been consulted, were of another mind. Queen 
Ranavalona, loyally sustained by the Hovas, refused 
to recognize the legality of "treaties" made by local 
chiefs for the cession of bits of coast land to France. 
What government would recognize a right acquired 
in this way? By the same token, the Protectorate 
was not recognized. France had to enter upon a 
war of conquest, and annex the island without the 
consent either of government or people. The Queen 
was deposed and sent into exile. Madagascar was 
declared a French possession. The Malagasy who 
opposed were treated as rebels. 

In the early days of French activity in Madagascar, 
there was much opposition to France and criticism 
of France in the British press. The agitation was 
fed by Protestant missionaries, who claimed that 
their work was ruined, and that the French were 
acting with great cruelty towards natives, whose 
only crime was love of country and liberty. But as 
Great Britain was at the time meditating the gob- 
bHng up of the Dutch republics in South Africa, the 
official ear was deaf to the cry of outraged humanity. 
The French went to Tananarive in the same year that 
Jameson went to Johannesburg : and Queen Ranava- 
lona was exiled to Algiers in the same year that Presi- 
dent Kruger made his desperate personal appeal to 
Europe. The French received Kruger with great 
enthusiasm, and the English held meetings in Albert 
Hall to wax indignant over the fate of the Queen 

39 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

of Madagascar. But neither Government made the 
other hold back from the poHcy of arbitrary conquest. 
The friends of "liberty and justice and the freedom 
of small nationalities" did what they always have 
done — and no more than they always have done. 
They protested, and cried out against the iniquity 
in the world. No Government espoused the cause 
of Boers or Malagasy. 

The results in Madagascar, just as the results in 
South Africa, have proved distinctly beneficial to the 
people of the country. If the end has not justified 
the means, it has at least caused the means to 
be forgotten. The South African Commonwealth 
brings credit upon the working out of British colonial 
policy. Madagascar is a credit to France. There 
was much initial suffering to native races, and a great 
amount of injustice in the early years. This is 
proved by the appeal of the Native Races Protection 
Committee, issued in Paris in 1900, which declared 
that the forced labor of the Malagasy was a crying 
scandal; that they were in a condition of slavery 
worse than that which the French Government had 
abolished by proclamation four years before they 
conquered the island ; and that the taxes amounted to 
exploitation. It was asserted that forced labor on 
roads was reducing the robust male population on the 
island; that natives were arrested and imprisoned 
without trial, and then compelled to work, because 
they were prisoners, without pay. Similar condi- 
tions have prevailed in all European colonies in Africa 
at the beginning oj European administration. But 
always in British colonies, and often in French and 

40 



THE ISLANDS OF AFRICA 

German colonies, they have been remedied with the 
change from military to civil administration. 

Madagascar to-day has over two million acres 
under cultivation. Although rubber is the principal 
product, sugar, coffee, cloves, cotton, vanilla, and 
vegetables are raised in considerable quantity. 
Scientific development of forest products, govern- 
ment initiative in cattle breeding, and the introduc- 
tion of silk-worms have done much for the prosperity 
of the natives. Mines are being opened up. There 
are nearly nine thousand miles of telegraph and 
telephone lines. Railway construction has advanced 
slowly. But there are many good roads, and motor- 
lorries are in use extensively. The revolution in 
motor transport through the invention and develop- 
ment of the automobile has changed remarkably the 
problem of transport on islands. Where plantations 
are large and the haul to the port is not more than 
two hundred kilometers, it is a question whether the 
public interest is not better served by good roads than 
by railways. The planter can load the automobile 
truck in the field, and unload directly at the steamer. 
The haul is down to sea-level. The experience of the 
French army at Verdun furnishes an excellent means 
of computing wear and tear on roads, and expense of 
upkeep. 

France was beginning to find a return in Madagas- 
car when the Great War broke out. There was 
trade with France to the amount of seventy-five 
million francs in 191 3. Of the ten thousand ships 
that entered Madagascar ports during that year, 
nearly seven thousand carried the French flag. 

41 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Some of France's most illustrious military men, of 
whom notable examples are Generals Gallieni and 
Lyautey, made their reputation and gained the 
experience that has enabled them to serve their 
country so well in the military and civil administra- 
tion of Madagascar. With the different tribes and 
languages, and no railways through the interior, 
the task was arduous, and required unflagging 
enthusiasm as well as tact and nerve. In Morocco 
lately, and on the battlefields of the Marne and 
Meuse and Somme, France has much to be grateful 
for in having had Madagascar to train her chiefs. 

Most important of all things is the fact that the 
French, in spite of their bad start, have succeeded in 
winning the natives. Second only to the Senagalese 
have been the Malagasy in their zeal to serve France 
in this war. I had been reading last April much that 
condemned the French in Madagascar. Just then 
General Gallieni died. I went with all Paris to pass 
before his bier in the chapelle ardente that had been 
made before the church door in the courtyard of the 
Invalides. The guard of honor around the coffin 
were Malagasy. 



42 



CHAPTER III 

THE LAST YEARS OF THE BOER WAR AND 
THE PERIOD OF RECONSTRUCTION 
IN SOUTH AFRICA 

BOTH from a military and political ' point of 
view, the year 1900 brought great disappoint- 
ment to the British Cabinet and to the 
commanders of the British army in South Africa. 
It had been confidently expected that the over- 
whelming odds against the Boers would result in a 
few months in the complete collapse of their power, 
if not of their will, to resist. But the arrival of Lord 
Roberts and the surrender of Cronje's army in Febru- 
ary did not prove to be "the beginning of the end." 
Although Ladysmith was relieved in March, and 
Mafeking in May, the task seemed almost as formi- 
dable as at the beginning. The British had to con- 
tend with the undisguised sympathy of the Boers in 
Cape Colony for the cause of the RepubHcs. As war 
prisoners frequently escaped from Simonstown, Cronje 
and his army were deported to St. Helena. Although 
most of the Cape Colony rebels, after the withdrawal 
of the Free State commandos in March, took advan- 
tage of Lord Milner's amnesty proclamation, the Boers 
of the Colony continued to use political weapons 

43 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

against the British. There was a ministerial crisis 
in June. Many members of the Cape Colony- 
Assembly were under arrest for treason, and yet 
the new Pregressive Government had only a majority 
of six. 

Lord Roberts sailed from Cape Town on December 
1st, fully satisfied that he was leaving to Lord 
Kitchener a guerilla warfare that could not last out 
the winter. Five days after his departure, an 
Afrikander Congress met at Worcester which passed 
resolutions disapproving the attitude of Lord Milner, 
denouncing the British conduct of the war, declaring 
that the white population of South Africa would be ex- 
terminated if peace were not soon made, and demand- 
ing that the Repubhcs be allowed to retain their 
independence. In Europe, French public opinion 
was bitterly hostile to Great Britain. Queen Victoria 
and the Prince of Wales, no less than Chamberlain 
and other members of the Government, were sub- 
jected in France to a campaign of caricature and 
scathing criticism hardly less violent than that which 
Kaiser Wilhelm, the Crown Prince, and von Beth- 
mann-HoUweg have experienced since August ist, 
1 9 14. President Kruger was received with hysterical 
enthusiasm in Paris. In view of the changes of the 
last fifteen years, it is curious to have to record that 
it was Kaiser Wilhelm 's refusal to receive Kruger 
that checkmated the Boer hopes of receiving sub- 
stantial aid from Europe. 

Early in 1901 martial law had to be declared 
throughout Cape Colony. In Natal, as well as in 
Cape Colony, Ministers, unable to depend upon 

44 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

parliamentary support, were driven to the ineluctable 
necessity of acting illegally. The Cape Parliament 
was twice prorogued. Newspapers were suppressed, 
and editors prosecuted. Trials for treason in Cape 
Colony and Natal resulted, in some cases, in the 
imposition of the death penalty. 

On August 7th, Lord Kitchener issued a drastic 
proclamation, which announced the annexation of 
the Orange Free State and the "late South Afri- 
can Republic." He declared that "Her Majesty's 
Forces are in possession of the seats of government, 
the whole machinery of administration, and the 
principal towns and railway lines of these two terri- 
tories; that only a few burghers are still under arms 
and, being short of ammunition, are unable to carry 
on regular warfare. Her Majesty's Government is 
determined to put an end to a state of things which is 
aimlessly prolonging bloodshed and destruction and 
inflicting ruin upon the great majority of inhabitants, 
who are anxious to live in peace and to earn a Hveli- 
hood for themselves and their families." Therefore, 
Lord Kitchener, under instructions from Her Majes- 
ty's Government, declared that the leaders of the 
Boer armies who did not surrender before September 
15th would be permanently banished from South 
Africa, and that "the cost of the maintenance of the 
families of the burghers in the field who had not 
surrendered by September 15th would be recoverable 
from such burghers and be a charge upon their prop- 
erty movable and unmovable in the two colonies." 

Lord Kitchener was disappointed in the effect of 
this measure. It only exasperated the Boers, and 

45 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

strengthened their will to resist to the bitter end. 
Ten thousand Boers were holding in check a British 
army of over two hundred thousand. Their hatred 
of the British was increased by the drastic step which 
Lord Kitchener felt compelled to take of establishing 
concentration camps, and of extending the area of 
"pacified" territory by means of a chain of block- 
houses. The terrible mortality among women and 
children in these concentration camps called forth 
a unanimous protest from the civilized world, which 
was especially strong in England itself. Who does 
not remember the bitter indictment of Miss Hobb- 
house's pamphlets? In July, 1124 children died 
from lack of milk; in August, 1525; in September, 
1964. Many Boers who lost their loved ones in 
these concentration camps, and of whom a striking 
example is General Hertzog, have never forgotten 
the wrongs inflicted upon innocent non-combatants 
during those awful days. ^ 

' I was living in London at this time, and know that the stories of 
Miss Hobbhouse, W. T. Stead, and others, were accepted as true. 
But Lord Kitchener, when he finally left South Africa, did not 
hesitate to state in his farewell speech: "The Commander-in- 
Chief has special pleasure in congratulating the Army on the kindly 
and humane spirit which has animated all during this long struggle. 
Fortunately for the future of South Africa, the truth of this matter 
is known to our late enemy, as well as to ourselves; and no misrepre- 
sentation from outside can prevail in the long run against the actual 
fact that no war has ever yet been waged in which combatants and 
non-combatants on either side have shown so much considera- 
tion and kindness to one another." The truth of the matter is that 
women and children — all non-combatants for that matter — cannot 
help suffering horribly as a result of the invasion of the territory in 
which they live. If we condemn the fact of invasion, naturally 
the responsibility for resultant suffering and mortality falls upon the 

46 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

Lord Milner, speaking at Johannesburg in January, 
1902, declared that the only possible way of ending 
the war was to "squeeze" the Boers until they made 
overtures of their own accord. So the line of block- 
houses was remorselessly extended. Lord Kitchener 
was aided appreciably in hastening the inevitable 
end by enlisting the services of five thousand burghers 
who had surrendered. Under the renegade General 
Vilonel, these "National Scouts" ("handsuppers, " 
they were contemptuously called by the other Boers) 
contributed a skill in guerilla warfare and an in- 
valuable typographical knowledge of the country 
to the final efforts of the British army. For the im- 
mediate purpose of finishing the war quickly, the use 
of the "handsuppers" was eminently successful. 
But it resulted in a bitter feeling, which has persisted 



Government that ordered the invasion and the army that carried 
out the order. But once that is said, is it not true that suffering 
and death cannot be prevented, or even always mitigated, when 
prevention or mitigation comes into conflict with military necessity? 
Lord Kitchener spoke with a clear conscience as a soldier, whose 
first duty was to accomplish his mission. Concentration camps 
and the blockhouse system resulted in the British victory. No 
other course of action was possible. Since all the cattle had been 
driven off the farms, where could fresh milk have been obtained? 
The children were victims of the war. It is not open to doubt that 
the British authorities did all they could to make the suffering and 
mortality as light as possible. If the concentration camps had not 
been established, it is probable that all the women and children 
would have died. The only direct responsibility that falls upon the 
army which executed orders given to it by the Home Government 
is from mistakes of judgment in placing some of the camps in un- 
suitable and unhealthy locations. But even here military men 
would argue that the exigencies of the situation necessitated the 
establishment of the camps in such places. 

47 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

until now, against the men who sold out the cause. 
The irreconcilables among the Boers have never 
ceased to maintain that the treachery of the renegades 
alone made possible British success. The "hands- 
uppers" were excommunicated by the Dutch Re- 
formed Church. Although the ecclesiastical ban 
was afterwards lifted, they have been considered 
ever since as outcasts even by those who are now 
loyal British subjects. 

General Delarey's success in defeating and taking 
prisoner Lord Methuen in March was the last victory 
for the Boers. In fact, when Delarey released Lord 
Methuen, in order that he might receive proper 
medical attention for his wounds, Boer magnanimity 
could not be interpreted otherwise than as a confes- 
sion that power of resistance had reached its end. 
Negotiations were begun on March 23rd. 

Kitchener and Milner had unequivocally stated 
that the restoration of Boer independence was out 
of the question. But the conference of burghers, 
which met at Vereeniging on May 15th, made the 
following proposals after three days of heated dis- 
cussion: the relinquishment of foreign relations and 
embassies; the acceptance of the protectorate of 
Great Britain; the surrender of a portion of the 
territory of the South African Republic; and the 
conclusion of a defensive treaty with Great Britain 
in regard to South Africa. When Kitchener and 
Milner declined to discuss these proposals, or tele- 
graph them to Mr. Chamberlain, and dictated terms 
of unconditional surrender upon which the burghers 
were to give a plain yes or no answer, General De 

48 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

Wet urged the delegates to continue the war. But 
"handsupping" had now become so prevalent that 
common sense determined the burghers to submit 
to the inevitable. As General Delarey put it, "If 
the meeting insisted on a continuation of hostilities 
the nation would be driven into 'handsupping'; thus 
the war would end in dishonor and disgrace." The 
terms dictated by Great Britain, and accepted at 
Vereeniging, contained ten stipulations : 

I. Unconditional surrender, and recognition of 
Edward VII. as lawful Sovereign. 2. Burghers in 
the field outside the limits of the two former Repub- 
lics and all prisoners of war to be returned to their 
homes as soon as transportation and means of sub- 
sistence made this possible. 3. No burghers sur- 
rendering or returning to be deprived of personal 
liberty or property. 4. Immunity from legal 
action, civil or criminal, of burghers for any acts in 
connection with the prosecution of the war. 5. 
The Dutch language to be taught in public schools, 
where the parents of the children desire it, and to be 
allowed in courts of law, when necessary for the 
better and more effectual administration of justice. 
6. The possession of rifles, subject to the taking 
out of a license, to be allowed to persons requiring 
them for their protection. 7. Military administra- 
tion to be succeeded by civil government at the 
earliest possible date, and, as soon as circumstances 
permitted, the introduction of representative in- 
stitutions, leading up to self-government. 8. The 
question of granting the franchise to natives not to 
be decided until after the introduction of self-govern- 
4 49 



THE NEW MAP OP AFRICA 

ment. 9. No special tax to be imposed on landed 
property in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony 
to defray the expenses of the war. 10. The appoint- 
ment of a commission, on which local inhabitants 
would be represented, for assisting the restoration of 
the people to their homes and their rehabilitation, 
and for this purpose the granting of £3,000,000 to 
compensate war losses suffered by the burghers: 
but no foreigner or rebel to be entitled to the benefit 
of this clause. 

There were eighteen thousand Boers left to sur- 
render. The war had cost Great Britain twenty-two 
thousand in killed alone. 

Lord Milner became Governor of the Transvaal 
on June 21st, and two days later Lord Kitchener 
left South Africa, having accomplished a task which 
proved conclusively that there had been no mistake 
in choosing the victor of Omdurman to solve the 
most aggravating military problem that had ever 
confronted a British general. 

There may be conflicting opinions, which history 
cannot reconcile, concerning the causes and the jus- 
tice of Great Britain's war of conquest against the 
Boers. There can be no doubt about the benefit 
that has resulted from it for the Boers themselves, 
for the British Empire, and for the whole world. 

The Boer War marks a distinct step forward in 
making Africa a white man's country. If we take 
the attitude that the white man should leave to 
indigenous elements the territories they have occupied 
(or, to put it more accurately, partially occupied) 
from the beginning of our knowledge of these terri- 

50 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

tones, we deny that our civilization has a right to 
exist and to prevail. We deny the logic and the 
justice of the forces that have contributed to make 
the worid what it is to-day. We deny that the Aryan 
race has had and still has a mission, and that that 
mission seems to have been peculiariy entrusted 
to the Anglo-Saxon element of the white race. The 
process of civilization is always painful, always 
fraught with temporary injustice, always prejudicial 
to the immediate interests of native races which 
refuse assimilation and resist enlightening influences. 

If we are going to denounce and deplore Anglo- 
Saxon domination in South Africa, the conquest of 
the aboriginal races on the North American continent 
and the gradual absorption of weaker ' European 
elements by the Anglo-Saxon must be denounced 
and deplored. When we view and comment upon 
events as they happen, we are ashamed to hold that 
the end justifies the means. But when we review 
and judge events with the perspective of years, is it 
not human nature to approve whatever has happened, 
when the results are unquestionably beneficial? 

Only the man who would like to see Africa still 
a "dark continent," completely out of touch with 
Europe and America, can indulge in destructive 
and vindictive criticism of European colonization in 
Africa. In passing judgment upon the activities of 
the different European states in Africa, there is 
only one sensible criterion — the results. So I have 
refrained from going into an appreciation of the 
causes of the Boer War, and have limited my account 
of the conflict between Boer and Briton to what was 

51 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

strictly necessary in order to introduce the work of 
evolution that has been going on in South Africa 
since 1900. The same point of view, the same 
method of treatment is adopted throughout this 
book. 

If the British Government, after the Boer War, 
had tried to exterminate the Boers, or to assimilate 
them violently and summarily, if they had denied to 
the Boers either the economic or political liberty 
they had enjoyed before, or that which they had a 
right to expect as British subjects, the Boer War 
would rightly be considered as a war of aggressive 
conquest, harmful to the interest of South Africans 
of all races, and would have resulted in a decade 
or more of terrorism. But, from the very day 
peace was signed, Great Britain began to work 
constructively for the happiness and well-being of all 
South Africans, irrespective of race. Local passions 
and prejudices tried to frustrate this typically Anglo- 
Saxon ideal. But generations of experience and of 
training, inbred with excellent tradition, had made 
the British Government uncannily wise in judging 
and dealing rightly with colonial problems. 

The first test came immediately after the peace 
of Vereeniging. The British Cabinet refused to be 
persuaded by South African "Imperialists" to 
suspend the Cape Colony Parliament on the ground 
that it would refuse to pass measures necessary for the 
pacification of the country. Rather than start in 
upon the delicate task of reconciliation and recon- 
struction by adopting an unconstitutional policy 
for expediency's sake, it was rightly believed to be 

52 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

better to risk the overthrow of a ministry favorable 
to the British Government. The ImperiaHst or 
Progressive Opposition was guided by Dr. Jameson 
rather more wisely than his past career would have 
indicated. In the years of reconciliation, a great 
deal is due to the wonderful growth, through re- 
sponsibility, of this man who had led the Raid that 
bears his name. It is curious how invariably radicals, 
hotheads, and extremists become conservative when 
power is placed in their hands. With each suc- 
ceeding year. Dr. Jameson became more moderate 
and charitable, and more able to impose moderation 
on his followers, many of whom advocated in the 
press and on the platform the policy of Prussia in 
Alsace and Lorraine. 

The problems that confronted the British Govern- 
ment in South Africa were so many and so complex 
that Mr. Chamberlain decided in the autumn of 
1902 to go to the Natal, Cape, Transvaal, and Orange 
River Colonies, so that he might investigate the post- 
bellum situation firsthand. His ostensible reason 
was to study the question of introdu'cing Chinese 
labor on the indenture system. When the inter- 
rupted work of the mines in the Transvaal was re- 
sumed, it had been found that only fifty thousand 
natives were willing to work, although three times 
that number were imperatively needed. White 
labor on an extensive scale was considered too costly. 
But the underlying motive of the Premier's visit 
was political rather than economic. It was his 
ambition to bring together the Dutch and English 
parties in Cape Colony, to discuss frankly with 

53 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the defeated Boer leaders in Pretoria and Bloem- 
fontein the practical questions involved in recon- 
struction, and to appeal to the Dutch everywhere 
"to let bygones be bygones." 

During this visit in the winter of 1902- 1903, Mr. 
Chamberlain found that the settlement of the 
South African question had only begun with the 
Peace of Vereeniging. There were all sorts of cur- 
rents, and cross currents, involving the parliamentary 
regime in Cape Colony; the economic relations be- 
tween Natal and Cape Colony and the two newly 
conquered colonies, especially in the way of railway 
agreements and railway extensions; the introduction 
of Chinese labor, to which all parties were opposed 
(the only thing the British and Dutch were in ac- 
cord upon in Cape Colony!); the repatriation of 
the Boers upon the breaking up of the concentra- 
tion camps, return of prisoners and distribution of 
the three million pound grant; the settlem.ent of 
Crown lands ; and the assessing of a war debt upon 
the defeated republics. 

Mr. Chamberlain was not sure that public opinion 
in England would receive favorably the proposition 
of Lord Milner to solve political difficulties by the 
introduction of British settlers upon Crown land. 
He found that the difficulty of pacification in South 
Africa was mostly through hostility to the National 
Scouts. The Boers insisted that it had not been the 
understanding that any portion of the three million 
pounds was to go to "handsuppers, " that any grants 
to them would be open to the suspicion of payment 
of promised bribes to traitors and renegades, as 

54 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

the "handsuppers" were regarded. At Pretoria, in 
answer to Mr. Chamberlain's plea for union, the 
Boers pressed for claims and advantages far beyond 
what the treaty had assured them. Mr. Chamberlain 
warned them that future amnesty and self-govern- 
ment would not come through pressure. At Bloem- 
fontein a deputation of Boers headed by General 
Christian De Wet told Mr. Chamberlain that there 
were many irreconcilables among the Boers, especially 
in what had been the Free State, and complained 
that the terms of peace were not being carried out. 
The real trouble was animosity against the National 
Scouts. Mr. Chamberlain and General De Wet both 
lost their temper, and a rather undignified scene 
followed. 

In connection with the labor question, the mine- 
owners of the Rand^ declared to Mr. Chamberlain 
that, as the immediate future of South Africa de- 
pended upon the extension of the gold industry, 
the importation of indentured Chinese was the only 
thing that could save the situation. The possibility 
of employing whites, they said, was out of the ques- 
tion, not only on account of the high wages demanded, 
but because whites could not do heavy manual work 
in a country inhabited by people of an inferior 
race without sinking to the economic level of the 
blacks. Hindoos were not of the physical build 
demanded for working in mines, and, if imported in 
large quantities, would end by demanding the right, 

' By the Rand is meant the mining area from Spring to Rand- 
fontein, a gold reef of thirty to forty miles, including Johannesburg 
and all the mining townships. 

55 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

as British subjects, to remain. For the blacks, on 
the other hand, it was contended that the scarcity 
of labor for the mines was due to the unwillingness 
of mine-owners to pay wages that would compete 
with the considerably higher wages offered for public 
works and railway construction. The labor question 
was serious, not only from the standpoint of 
the mine-owners, but also from the standpoint of the 
entire white population of the colony. Half the 
stamps on the mines were idle for lack of labor. As 
the mines used coal and furnished the principal 
receipts for the railways, economic rehabilitation 
and development could not be hoped for so long as 
the mines were not being fully worked. Unless this 
question could be solved, the Boer War would have 
been fought in vain: for upon the Transvaal mines 
depended the economic prosperity of the whole of 
South Africa, and the justification of extensive rail- 
way construction, which alone could develop the 
agricultural resources of the four colonies and of 
Rhodesia. It was fruitless to talk of a war loan, 
unless the Transvaal was put in the position of 
meeting the interest on the loan. 

The task of the Home Government was compli- 
cated by conflicting sentiments in the British electo- 
rate. There was a universal feeling that the 
tremendous sacrifice of treasure and of blood made 
by England should not result in an additional burden 
on the British taxpayer, while trade with South 
Africa (which had increased in ten years from nine 
million pounds to twenty-six million pounds) was 
diminished. On the other hand, the nonconformist 

56 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

conscience and labor sentiment were hostile to the 
adoption of a program in South Africa that would 
mean the infringement of personal liberty and the 
denial of the principles which apologists had advanced 
in justification for undertaking the war. No post- 
factum substantiation must be given to the accusa- 
tion so often made that the war had been instigated 
by and fought for the mine-owners. 

The general result of Mr. Chamberlain's visit to 
South Africa was the adoption by the Imperial 
Government of the only policy that would avoid 
going from Scylla to Charybdis. The Cabinet 
tried, with varying fortunes at first, but with ulti- 
mate success at last, to base its South African policy 
upon the principle that South African questions be 
decided in the final analysis by South Africans, and 
that London abstain from overriding colonial wishes 
in regard to colonial interests. Extreme care, how- 
ever, had to be exercised in finding out what really 
was the opinion on all these questions. Imperialist 
and Boer fanatics did their best to retard union, 
although the former thought they were working for 
it. For the extreme elements in both parties tried to 
make the Cabinet believe that they voiced the 
sentiments of the people, and to influence the Cabinet 
to decisions inimical to the real interests of South 
Africa. 

Because the years between the treaty of Vereenig- 
ing and the establishment of the Commonwealth 
developed problems that are being faced or that will 
have to be faced soon in all African colonies, it is 
important to set each one of them forth in more 

57 



THE NEW MAP OP AFRICA 

detail than would otherwise be justifiable in a book 
whose scope includes the whole of Africa. Then, 
too, it must be remembered that the formation of the 
Commonwealth, which could come only after these 
questions had been for years in the melting-pot, is a 
justification of Great Britain's r61e in Africa, and the 
goal towards which all the States who are colonizing 
Africa must equally work. 

For the sake of avoiding confusion and in order 
to make these problems stand out beyond their 
South African setting, I deal with each one of them 
separately, and do not attempt to coordinate them 
chronologically between 1902 and 1910. 

THE MINES AND THE PROBLEM OF WHITE, BLACK, AND 
CHINESE LABOR 

The accusation against the mine-owners that 
they were endeavoring to compel blacks to work for a 
wage lower than could be obtained in the open market 
does not seem to be substantiated by the facts. I 
have been told by competent observers that the failure 
to secure native labor in 1903 was mainly due to the 
unsettled state of the country and the reluctance of 
the natives to leave their krals until they had con- 
fidence that order was restored. As they had been 
very prosperous during the war and had saved money, 
they did not feel the necessity of working. Where in 
the world do negroes work when they have money? 
If one bears in mind the fact that the Rand enter- 
prises involved wholly " uitlanders, " and that the 
Boers were exclusively agriculturalists, it is possible 

58 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

to look for an economic motive underlying the 
political one. Farmers who could afford to give the 
blacks ten shillings a month at the most, regarded 
mines, with the wage rate of two pounds fifteen to 
three pounds with food, as the cause of their in- 
ability to get sufficient labor. All along, since gold 
was discovered in the Transvaal to the present day, 
animosity against the "uitlander" has been kept 
alive for this very patent reason. Far from sym- 
pathizing with the contention that the mine-owners 
were willing to give the blacks too little, the Boer 
farmers have complained of the blacks being too well 
paid. They have frequently tried to get the Govern- 
ment to legislate in their favor, but without success. 
When it comes to white labor versus black labor, 
the cause of the failure to run the mines with white 
labor is neither wages nor climate. It is a social 
question. The white man will not work alongside 
the black man. He is physically able to do as much, 
if not more work, than the black, but he will not 
do the same work. Labor leaders in South Africa 
have failed utterly in their efforts to demonstrate 
that mines could be worked by whites, for the simple 
reason that white laborers, even when starving, 
refuse to do "niggers' work." White men demand 
positions in which there is not hard manual labor. 
It seems amply demonstrated that there is no place 
in South Africa for the white man who has no trade, 
and no opportunity to develop his own land. The 
poor white problem has become acute in South 
Africa. Europeans without a trade or commercial 
aptitude, and without money to develop land, are 

59 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

discouraged from coming into the Commonwealth: 
for the white man who has no other resource than his 
hands is apt to become a charge upon the community 
and a menace. The South African Labor Party has 
now come to a position where it opposes only the 
use of natives who are brought into the labor market 
from outside the Commonwealth. 

As to the rate of wages that it is possible for mine- 
owners to pay, it must be remembered that practically 
all the mines of the Rand are low grade propo- 
sitions, and are worked sometimes to a depth of 
seven thousand feet. Many miles of reef are now 
unworked because the ore is too low grade to yield 
a profit, even at the native rate of wages. Some 
mines have paid nothing to their shareholders for 
years, and others are just above the margin of pay- 
ability. Even if it be admitted that the cost of 
administration and the capitalization are in many 
cases excessive, a sUght increase of wages would 
wipe out the margin between profit and loss in the 
most carefully run and most conservatively capi- 
talized mine. 

The sentiment against the introduction of Chinese 
labor was greatly strengthened in England by the 
resignation of Commissioner of Mines Wyebergh 
and Mr. Monypenny, Editor of the Johannesburg 
Star, who had been a brilliant advocate of the British 
cause during the war. Mr. Wyebergh championed 
the employment of white unskilled labor, denying 
that it would be impracticable or excessively costly. 
He charged that the financial houses on the Rand 
had unduly influenced the policy of the Government. 

60 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

Mr. Monypenny refused to use his pen "in the 
interest of the mine-owners." There were un- 
doubtedly two sides to the question, but when 
one tries to view it from the standpoint of the immedi- 
ate interest of the Transvaal, takes into consideration 
the safeguards that it was proposed to put arouind the 
introduction of this new element into South Africa, 
and remembers that Chinese labor was proposed only 
temporarily as an experiment, it is difKcuit to understand 
the strong opposition that the suggestion aroused. 

In the beginning of 1904, when Lord Milner saw 
that the Transvaal and Orange River Colony budgets 
were going to have a deficit of nearly seven hundred 
thousand pounds, he cabled to London for permission 
to introduce an ordinance to enforce Chinese labor, 
stating that opposition to such a measure was dying 
down, and declaring that white men would leave the 
Transvaal if it were not done. The Legislative 
Council passed the ordinance, and royal assent was 
published on March 12th. The first shipload of one 
thousand coolies sailed from Hongkong on May 
5th. Australia cabled a protest to London. Public 
opinion in Cape Colony was frankly hostile. The 
influential Boers signed a statement to the effect 
that the overwhelming majority of Boers was un- 
alterably opposed to the introduction of Asiatics 
under whatever conditions. Boer opposition, how- 
ever, as one can gather from the statement of General 
Botha, was largely dup to the fact that they believed 
such a step should not be taken before the responsible 
Government promised by the Treaty of Vereeniging 
had been granted. 

61 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

At the beginning of 1905, there were 35,000 Chinese 
on the Rand and by the end of July the number had 
increased to 43,000. Strikes and assassinations in 
the compounds were followed by many Chinese 
breaking loose. White women were attacked. 
Then the Boers demanded of Lord Selborne that they 
be permitted to carry arms in defence against the 
Chinese, and that the immigration cease. ^ 

The Chinese claimed that they had been imposed 
upon, and did not realize that they were coming to 
Africa to be virtual prisoners. 

Immediately after the fall of the Balfour Cabinet 
in December, 1905, Lord Elgin ordered by cable the 
stopping of the importation of Chinese, pending 
the decision to grant responsible government to the 
colony. During that year, a thousand Chinese had 
already been repatriated for violation of contract 
or disorderly conduct. Repatriation continued in 
1907 and 1908, as indentures expired. By the end 
of July, 1908, only five thousand were left, and the 
last left early in 1910. 

If the intention of the experiment of Chinese labor 
was merely to set the wheels of industry working 
quickly so that the country could pay its way (as 

^ The Boers were really In favor of Chinese labor, though for 
sentimental reasons they professed not to be. Chinese recruitment 
for the mines enabled the Boers to get cheap Kafhr labor for the 
farms, which they never could do in competition with the mines. 
There was actually a proposal made in Parliament by a Transvaal 
member in 19 13 to re-introduce Chinese labor for the mines on the 
ground that it would help the farmers to get Kaffir labor cheaper 
than was then possible. It found universal support among the 
Transvaal farmers. 

62 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

practically the whole revenue of the Transvaal was 
derived directly or indirectly from the mines), the 
experiment was far from being a failure. Its warmest 
supporters had not tried to defend it, or to establish 
it as a permanent institution. 

INDIAN COLONIST RIGHTS AND INDIAN IMMIGRATION 

A bitter grievance of the British press against the 
Kruger administration had been its treatment of 
Indian British subjects. The British Government's 
technical ground for coming into open- conflict 
with the Transvaal Government was the violation 
of the London Convention. For disabilities were 
imposed upon British Indians as to residence and 
freedom to pursue their legitimate callings in the 
Transvaal. But after the Boer War the treatment 
of British Indians was not remedied. Facts were laid 
before Parliament to show that rights enjoyed under 
Kruger had actually been curtailed by the new 
British administration! In 1904 the Government 
of India made a formal protest. Parliament was 
reminded of the old grievance against Kruger, 
and how the thesis at that time had been adopted 
by the British Government in dealing with the 
Transvaal, that the London Convention applied to 
all British subjects, irrespective of race, creed, color, 
or language, so that Indians had the right to enter, 
travel, or reside in any part of the Transvaal, without 
restrictions. 

There has been no difference between Kruger's 
treatment of the Indians and that of the Government 

63 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

which ousted him. No protest from Calcutta, even 
when backed by London and the press, had any effect. 
Upon this question there is perfect soHdarity between 
EngHsh and Dutch in South Africa. The thesis of 
South Africa is that unrestricted right of entry to 
Indians will lower the whole standard of living for 
the white man and make his existence in the country 
impossible. It is the same thesis as is adopted 
regarding Asiatic immigration by California and our 
other western States, by Canada and by Australia. 
It has extended to the European settlers of British 
East Africa. Questions of justice, fair play, higher 
considerations of national interest fall on deaf 
ears when the Anglo-Saxon is asked to let in the 
Asiatic. He simply will not do it. There is no 
argument. Only those who are far away from the 
"yellow peril" and who would not be affected them- 
selves by unrestricted Asiatic immigration espouse the 
cause of Japanese, Chinese, and Indians. I am not 
approving or condemning. I simply state the fact. 

After nine years of futile protest, the British 
Viceroy in India decided to give up the struggle. 
All that is asked for now is liberal treatment of the 
Indian already in the country. The South African 
Commonwealth, no more than Kruger, has not ac- 
cepted the London Convention. Nor will it ever do 
so. 

THE Transvaal's war "contribution" 

One great question which Mr. Chamberlain went 
to South Africa "to settle" was the financial situa- 

64 



NO R T H 
A T IL A N r I 




SOUTH 

A t\l A r 



AI 



SHOWING THE. Ol 
AMONG EUR 



BRITISH 



lis ii- j--. tA FRENCH 

I I GERMAN 

L_ I ITALIAN 

l I PORTUCU. 

L_ I SPANISH 

9 zoo 4no « 

T [ 1 I 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

tion of the new colonies. He announced at Johannes- 
burg that the Imperial Government would submit 
to Parliament a bill to guarantee a loan of thirty- 
five million pounds sterling, secured by the assets 
of the Transvaal and Orange River colonies, to pay 
existing debts of the former governments, to provide 
for expenditures for pubhc works, land settlements, 
and new railways. There could be no reasonable 
opposition to this bill. For it was imperative to put 
a firm financial foundation as soon as possible under 
the new colonies, and to make possible the develop- 
ment of the territories through Government initiative. 
This was to the interest of all the inhabitants of the 
colonies. 

But when Mr. Chamberlain added that a second 
loan of thirty million pounds would be floated, to be 
considered as a war debt secured on the assets of the 
Transvaal, for the purpose of paying the conquerors 
a portion of the expenditure of the conquest, and that 
the first ten million pounds of this loan was to be 
taken up by local mine owners, a howl of protest was 
raised that never ceased. The Boers maintained 
that their future could not be mortgaged in this 
way, and pointed out that the question of a war 
contribution was not mentioned in the stipulations 
of the Treaty of Vereeniging, and was contrary to the 
spirit, if not to the text, of Article 9. They said only 
that if Great Britain thought it worth while to under- 
take a war, which had not been of their seeking, in 
order to conquer them, it was up to the British to 
foot the bill, and look for compensation in pride over 

s 65 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the extension of their sovereignty and in profit from 
the development of their trade. 

When it came to floating the first ten million 
pound installment of the Transvaal war loan, Lord 
Milner realized that the colony was in no position 
to pay the interest even on this one-third. He let 
London know clearly how much he feared the result 
of the imposition of this obligation. He felt strongly 
that the dissatisfaction resulting among the Boers 
would be a serious obstacle to reconciliation and 
reconstruction. The agitation was great at that 
moment against the Chinese Immigration Bill. So 
the British Government decided to postpone the 
measure. 

At a congress in 1905, General Botha, speaking 
against the provisions of the proposed constitution, 
declared that ten capitalists had imposed a war loan 
upon the people without their consent. A day of 
humiliation and prayer was appointed in the Dutch 
churches. When responsible government was finally 
granted to the Transvaal, Great Britain wisely 
decided to forego entirely the war contribution 
arranged by Mr. Chamberlain with the mining mag- 
nates. Whenever it is a question of colonial prob- 
lems, common sense eventually wins every time in 
British Cabinet councils. They knew well that 
one of the first acts of the Transvaal Government 
would be to repudiate the debt. They were 
happy enough to see the way clear to a solution of 
the Transvaal problem without borrowing trouble 
over the question of a few million pounds. 

66 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

GRANTING RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT TO THE 
TRANSVAAL AND THE ORANGE FREE STATE 

We have spoken of the wise decision of the Home 
Government to resist the demand of the extreme 
EngHsh party in Cape Colony for suspension of the 
Colonial Parliament on the ground that it would 
refuse to pass measures necessary for the pacification 
of the country, and also of the representations made 
to Mr. Chamberlain at the time of his visit to the 
Transvaal and the Free State during the winter after 
the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed. Mr. Chamber- 
lain told the Boers that the British Government 
and the British people were in entire sympathy 
with the principle of self-government, and that the 
promise of the Treaty of Vereeniging concerning the 
establishment of responsible government would be 
fulfilled at the earliest possible moment. But he 
warned the Boers that agitation and pressure would 
retard rather than hasten the day when responsible 
government would be granted. 

Mr. Chamberlain's warning might have come 
true had the Conservative Cabinet remained firmly 
in power, and had not the advocates of the union of 
the South African colonies felt that delaying re- 
sponsible government menaced the success of their 
plan. 

From the very beginning the Boers did agitate 
for responsible government, and they brought pres- 
sure to bear — unrest and racial animosity in the 
Transvaal and the Free State, political manoeuvering 
in the Cape Parliament, economic threats in Natal, 

67 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

and a powerful sentimental propaganda in England. 
When one reads the history of the years between 
the end of the Boer War and the downfall of the 
Chamberlain-Balfour Ministry, and wades through 
the mass of polemical literature on both sides, he 
marvels at the courage of the decision to give in to 
the Boers on this question when they were still 
showing themselves bitter and intractable. The 
Boers did not want responsible government under 
the terms granted to them — it had to be all their way 
or no way at all. The decision to give responsible 
government is a notable proof of the intuitive genius 
of the British as empire-builders. 

The Boer agitation in both the conquered republics 
had much to feed upon, and was skillful in grouping 
itself around questions concerning which there was 
the strongest sort of public sentiment in England. 
In the stand they took on some of these "moral 
issues," the Boers were undoubtedly insincere. 
They were making a bid for support in England. 
They opposed the introduction of Chinese labor; 
the imposition of the war loan ; what they called the 
running of the country by the mine-owners; Mr. 
Chamberlain's scheme to increase the taxation of 
blacks in order to make them work; the sacrifice of 
agricultural interests to mining interests; the dis- 
crimination against their language; the quartering 
of a big garrison upon them; and the "mulcting" of 
the Transvaal, especially in the matter of railways, 
to help Cape Colony and Natal. Many of the claims 
and assertions of the Boers were untrue. But they 
won the electorate in England at a moment when 

68 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

Liberalism, the Labor party, and the nonconformist 
conscience were coming to their own. Nothing is 
more admirable in the world than the intuitive 
response of the Anglo-Saxon to an appeal for "fair 
play." Anglo-Saxon public opinion, for fear that it 
might not be "playing the game," demands that 
Government officials lean over backwards in order to 
do the square thing by a vanquished foe. 

. The detailed history of the local struggle from 
the end of 1902 to the end of 1905 is not material. 
We need only to give the result. A step was made 
towards changing the post-bellum regime in the 
Transvaal early in 1905, before the Conservatives 
had to quit the Government. On December 22, 
1905, the new Liberal Colonial Secretary, Lord Elgin 
ordered by cable the suspension of Chinese labor, 
importation, "pending the decision by the Imperial 
Government as to the grant of responsible govern- 
ment to the Transvaal Colony," In fairness to the 
Conservative Cabinet, one must say that they had 
every reason to feel perplexed during the summer 
and autumn of 1905. For the 'Boers, moderates 
and extremists, were united in demanding that the 
Free State should receive responsible government 
at the same time as the Transvaal, and in main- 
taining that the constitution proposed for the Trans- 
vaal by the Orders in Council of March 31, 1905, 
was unsatisfactory in many of its details, and in its 
entirety "a breach of the terms of peace." One of 
the principal objections — and in this the Boers were 
perfectly right — was that the proposed constitution 
did not exclude from the franchise the Army of 

69 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Occupation. The soldiers were contemptuously re- 
ferred to in the Boer protests as "hired foreigners." 
General Botha, upon whom Englishmen of clear 
head and foresight were already placing their hopes" 
of the future, denounced the constitution. He 
claimed that the Free State had been a party to 
the Treaty of Vereeniging on equal terms with the 
Transvaal, and that ten capitalists had more in- 
fluence with the British Government than all the 
inhabitants of the Transvaal Colony. 

Throughout the year 1906 — the first year of Liberal 
Government in England — the agitation waxed strong. 
Some Boers left for the Argentine, and others began 
to trek to East Africa. General Beyers, campaigning 
for Het Volk,^ said: "The tree chopped at Vereeni- 
ging is sprouting again. A people bound together 
by blood and tears cannot be lost." The contention 
of Mr. Lyttleton, who drafted the constitution, was 
that self-government meant party government, 
and that if party government were conducted along 
racial lines, the result would be disastrous. The fact 
that the mining interests were lobbying in London for 
the support of the constitution in its original form 
alienated rather than gained English advocates. 

The British Government gave in on the provisions 



' Het Volk (the people) was the name of a newspaper published 
in Pretoria long before the war. The political organization of that 
name was the party in the Transvaal which began to agitate for 
responsible government immediately after the Treaty of Vereeni- 
ging, and which later spread to the other colonies. Het Volk is 
frequently used as a general term to describe the Boer party in 
politics. 

70 . . 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

allowing British garrisons to vote and directing that 
EngHsh alone be used in debates. The military 
were excluded, and pariiamentary procedure was 
made bilingual. It also yielded in the matter of the 
Free State self-government. Responsible govern- 
ment was granted to the Transvaal on December 6, 
1906, and eleven days later Parliament was told 
that the Free State also would receive responsible 
government. The Free State was granted a con- 
stitution on June 5, 1907. 

The first elections under the constitution were held 
in the Transvaal in January, 1907. Het Volk won. 
A Johannesburg newspaper declared that the cabinet 
would be almost an exact replica of the staff of the 
Boer army. It was not quite that: but General 
Botha was Premier and General Smuts, Colonial 
Secretary. Although the local English residents, 
blinded by prejudice, could not see it, the begin- 
ning of responsible government under such splendid 
leaders pointed to a future which was realized in a 
most remarkable way in 1914. General Botha sent 
a message to the English people in defense of Het 
Volk. He declared that the Boers could not forget 
the generosity and the token of confidence of the 
British nation in granting them responsible govern- 
ment, and said that the question of the flag and 
sovereignty -had been settled for all time. 

In November, 1907, the Dutch party gained a 
sweeping victory in the first Orange Free State 
elections. Thirteen of the thirty-eight members of 
Parliament were returned unopposed by Het Volk. 
There was no racial conflict outside of Bloemfontein. 

71 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

The Dutch gained all except eight seats in Parlia- 
ment. Both in the Transvaal and in the Free State, 
the Dutch pronounced themselves in favor of federa- 
tion. But in the Free State they were much more 
extreme and jealous on the question of the main- 
tenance of the Taal language. The Free State 
Boers were also determined that in the future South 
African Commonwealth, Cape Colony should not 
give the natives right to vote, and Natal should 
withhold the franchise from coolies and other 
Asiatics. 

In the general election of 1908, the Dutch party 
in Cape Colony secured a working majority. This 
made the Dutch supreme in three colonies. The 
Dutch of Cape Colony were quite at one with the 
Opposition under Dr. Jameson in desiring federation. 
In spite of the almost universal condemnation of the 
policy by English residents of South Africa, granting 
responsible government to the former Republics 
was from the first a success. How it has worked 
out is told in a later chapter. 



THE TAAL AGAINST ENGLISH IN THE SCHOOLS 

Nations cling to their language because they feel 
that language is the sign of nationahty. As one 
speaks, so one thinks; as one thinks, so one is. Great 
nations, strong and advanced and numerous, prove 
their belief in the essential importance of language 
by the efforts they make as individuals and small 
communities, when surrounded by foreigners, to 

72" 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

maintain their language and pass it on as a precious 
heritage to their children. They prove it by the 
efforts they make as governments to ground and 
solidify their political influence in .their possessions 
by spreading their language as rapidly as possible 
among subject races. Small nations demonstrate 
their belief in the national importance of language 
by the almost insane pride and jealousy they show- 
in defense of their tongue. Subject races put their 
faith in language as the medium for awakening and 
sustaining national feeling, and keeping alive hopes 
of future emancipation. Is it to be wondered at, 
then, that the Dutch have put the language ques- 
tion first and foremost in their political program 
in South Africa? Are they to be blamed or to be 
denounced as fanatics because they hold dear to the 
living tangible sign that binds them to the past in 
the land which their fathers colonized and conse- 
crated by their blood? 

The Anglo-Saxon is at his worst — is insufferable 
even — when he is engaged in controversies where 
his tongue is involved. He simply cannot see the 
other man's point of view, and he does not want to 
see it. He believes that he has the best language 
God ever made just as firmly as he believes that his 
is the best race God ever made. We have a perfect 
right to our opinion (I say we because I am Anglo- 
Saxon by blood and tradition just as much as any 
Englishman), but have we a right to become im- 
patient at and get angry with and look contemptu- 
ously upon the man who does not agree with us for 
the very good reason that he is not one of us ? 

73 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

From the day the Treaty of Vereeniging was 
signed, the language question received far more 
prominence than it ought to have had. In standing 
by his language, and insisting that it should be 
preserved in legislative assemblies and courts and 
schools, the Boer was acting by the instinct that 
moves every man. He was led to make it a great 
and bitter political issue, and to believe that it 
loomed up as the most important thing on the 
political horizon, because of the lack of considera- 
tion of the English element in South Africa. Instead 
of sympathizing with the Boer in his outspoken 
expression of a natural instinct, his language was 
ridiculed and his motive for maintaining it inter- 
preted as purely political, with something sinister 
in it and subversive of public peace. The attitude 
of the English in South Africa (fortunately not offi- 
cials representing the Home Government, but English 
residents) toward the Boers on the language question 
has been exactly the same as the attitude of the 
Prussians and Russians toward the Poles. 

There is not space to go into a history of the 
conflict over the language question. It is very 
much the same as that which one finds in many 
parts of Europe to-day, and has the usual features: 
espousal of the subject language by the Church; 
establishment of schools supported by private sub- 
scription, and taught largely by the clergy; refusal 
to use the alien language in courts and public assemb- 
lies; insistence upon the retention of the subject 
language in public schools; establishment of institu- 
tions of higher education — even to universities — 

74 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

where the medium prescribed is the native lan- 
guage. 

As in everything else in South Africa, the extremists 
on both sides failed to carry the day. Imperturbable 
in the face of bitter criticism, High Commissioners 
refused to embody in reports to London the assertions 
of the Imperialists that the Boers were plotting 
treason through their solicitude for their native 
tongue, and the Home Government refused to give 
credence to these assertions when they came through 
other sources. The greatest credit in finding a 
modus Vivendi is due to moderate Boer leaders, who 
braved the criticism of their own followers in the 
determination to follow a fair and intelligent policy 
in the relation of the two languages. The result 
has been as satisfactory as can be expected under the 
exceedingly difficult and delicate circumstances of 
two races living side by side, neither of which is 
very good at reconciling itself to the idea of "live 
and let live." 

The Taal is used throughout the Union as the sole 
medium for instruction, if it is the mother language, 
for the first two or three years. Then English is 
introduced as a language, not as a medium. In the 
towns, English is the medium because it is the 
mother language of the majority of the children, 
and Dutch is optional and taught as a language. 
Boer children when they leave school now under- 
stand English, if they have gone through the sec- 
ondary school course. English has gained greatly 
everywhere in Dutch-speaking communities. Al- 
though Dutch pastors foster the Taal, they cannot, 

75 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

except in the "backwoods districts, " oppose English. 
For in so doing they would fatally militate against 
the possibility of higher education, which is not 
obtainable in the Taal. And the maintenance of 
Boer supremacy in South Africa depends wholly upon 
the higher education of the younger Boers. The 
danger from remaining ignorant is greater than the 
danger of becoming denationalized through higher 
education. 

In considering the movement to make the Taal 
a language for secondary and higher education, it 
must be remembered that this patois, with its large 
admixture of Kaffir and English words, is unfortun- 
ately not enough akin to Dutch to make possible 
the borrowing of Dutch literature and the use of 
Dutch text-books. Having no extensive literature, 
and the Afrikanders being without the financial 
means and energy and ability to make text-books 
in Taal for more than primary classes, it is easily 
seen that secondary education is impossible for the 
Afrikanders unless they learn some foreign language. 
As their fortunes are now cast in with the English, 
it is only common sense that secondary and higher 
education be in the English language. It is just as 
hard for the Afrikander to learn good Dutch as to 
learn good English. He has a thousand uses for 
English, and a wealth of literature to draw upon. 
Learning Dutch, then, which he never has a chance 
to use and whose literature is comparatively cir- 
cumscribed, is sentimental folly — a protest that is 
a boomerang, reacting upon him against his best 
interests. 

76 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

CONFLICTING LOCAL INTERESTS OF CONTIGUOUS 

COLONIES UNDER THE SAME FLAG HASTEN 

UNION 

In colonies where the European population, outside 
of military and civil officials, is very small, the 
interests of contiguous colonies under the same flag 
are easily adjusted. The French and British in 
their West African colonies, and the British in ar- 
ranging the boundaries and economic interests of 
East Africa, Uganda, and the Sudan, had little 
difficulty. Decisions were made in Paris and 
London, and the colonists had no say in the matter. 
If advice was asked, it was not necessarily followed. 
France brought her West African colonies under a 
common administrative control by a Presidential 
Decree. ^ Great Britain incorporated Lagos in Nigeria 
and later joined Northern and Southern Nigeria, by 
Orders in Council. French Equatorial Africa had 
to cede large and important parts of her territory to 
Germany on word from Paris. Great Britain de- 
prived Gambia and Nigeria of hinterland for the 
sake of making a good bargain with France over 
matters that concerned neither of these colonies. 
In South Africa the situation was totally different. 
Here the colonists were so numerous that they had 
to be let alone to settle their own affairs. 

Long before the Boer War, there was friction 
between Natal and Cape Colony over many matters, 
but principally over the carrying trade with the two 
Dutch republics. When the Orange Free State and 
the Transvaal became British colonies, the conflict 

77 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

of local interests, instead of being remedied, became 
more acute. To add to the difficulties of the Home 
Government, Rhodesia, now contiguous British 
territory on the north and very rapidly developing, 
had interests that conflicted in many ways with the 
four British colonies in the south. 

One illustration alone will suffice to show the 
particularism of the colonies, the judicious restraint 
exercised by the British Cabinet in adopting a strict 
non-intervention policy, and the lesson forcibly 
taught that safety and strength for the future to all 
the colonies lay in union alone. 

The shortest haul from the Rand mines in the 
Transvaal to the sea was through Portuguese East 
Africa to the port of Lorenzo Marques on Delagoa 
Bay. Portuguese territory formed the entire western 
and seaward boundary of the Transvaal. From 
Portuguese territory the Transvaal recruited annu- 
ally an essential amount of native labor. When 
Lord Milner, on December i8, 1901, signed with the 
Governor of Portuguese East Africa a temporary 
agreement, maintaining the former treaties between 
Portugal and the Transvaal Republic, he took the 
only course possible under the circumstances. The 
surrender of the Boers was a matter of months. 
For the rehabilitation of the Transvaal all the rail- 
way outlets to the coast were necessary, especially 
this shortest one through Portuguese territory; and 
the Transvaal would need all the labor it could 
recruit from every source. Lord Milner bound the 
new colony in general to the terms established in 
1875 for traffic between the Transvaal and Lorenzo 

78 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

Marques. The former tariffs were maintained; 
equal treatment in the Transvaal for merchandise 
coming from Lorenzo Marques with that entering 
by Cape Colony and Natal ports; obligation to 
furnish to the Portuguese railway a fixed amount of 
freight every day; application to civil traffic from 
Lorenzo Marques to the Transvaal of the same 
principles and rules which govern the traffic of 
similar character coming from the Cape and from 
Natal ; alcohol and liquors not to be taxed more than 
if they came from the Cape and from Natal ; freedom 
of recruiting native labor for the Transvaal in Portu- 
guese territory and right of the Portuguese authorities 
to supervise at Pretoria and Johannesburg the ful- 
fillment of the contracts entered into with natives 
thus recruited. 

The Lorenzo Marques Railway had reached the 
Transvaal frontier only in 1890 and Pretoria in 1894. 
Before that time the Cape and Natal railways had 
a monopoly of imports to and exports from the 
Transvaal'. The profits were very great, and the 
two colonies had only each other as rivals. Between 
the time the Portuguese railway was opened and 
the outbreak of the Boer War, the Cape Railway 
saw its carrying trade with the Transvaal reduced 
from eighty per cent, of the total trade to thirty- 
seven per cent. Of this Durban in Natal received 
only three per cent. The other forty per cent, 
went to Lorenzo Marques. The loss was not only 
in railway receipts. There were port dues, better 
facilities of transport through the coming of more 
ships, quay dues, warehouse dues, and large sums 

79 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

made by longshoremen and others who handled the 
freight from ships to railway. 

Cape Colony and Natal both thought that the 
incorporation of the Transvaal in the British Empire 
would certainly mean the return to them of this 
valuable traffic. They were terribly upset when 
Lord Milner decided to maintain the treaty with 
Portugal. Powerful influences were set in motion 
in London to have Lord Milner's decision revoked. 
But the British Government stood firm. They saw 
clearly that if they allowed to be taken away from 
Lorenzo Marques the carrying trade which was the 
chief source of revenue for the whole Portuguese 
colony, Portugal would retaliate by forbidding her 
natives to go to work in the Transvaal. Pressure 
could not be brought to bear on Portugal on this 
point, because British colonies in Africa were doing 
the very same thing in regard to each other in order 
to conserve for themselves the labor of natives who 
were willing to work. Almost half the native labor 
in the Transvaal mines came from Portuguese East 
Africa. To jeopardize this valuable source of native 
labor was, in Lord Milner's opinion, a danger much 
greater than that of offending Cape Colony and 
Natal. 

When the Transvaal received self-government, 
the situation became worse for the two old British 
colonies. From^:i902 to 1907, they had tried every 
means of bringing the Transvaal to terms. But 
what could be done against a simple fact of geography? 
Lorenzo Marques is only about one-third as far from 
the Rand as Cape Town. It is more than a hundred 

80 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

miles nearer the Rand than Durban. Even with 
equal tariffs, the sliortest route was preferable. By- 
lowering their tariffs to meet those of Lorenzo 
Marques, Cape Town would operate at a loss and 
Durban with no gain. In order to meet the de- 
ficit incurred in railway receipts by the Portuguese 
competition. Cape Colony and Natal raised their 
customs duties against the Transvaal. A tariff 
war ensued. At this point, common sense pre- 
vailed. The colonies got together, and discussed 
their common interests. From this discussion was 
bom the federation, the story of which is reserved 
for a later chapter. 

But even after the conferences for discussing federa- 
tion were long under way, the Transvaal warned Cape 
Colony and Natal that too high duties, or duties 
against the Transvaal's particular interests, would 
lead to a refusal to enter the Union. To show the 
other colonies how independent she could be, a 
delegate from Portuguese East Africa was invited 
by the Transvaal to the conference of Pretoria. The 
Transvaal was willing, if necessary, to trade entirely 
through Lorenzo Marques! 

Just on the eve of the Commonwealth, the Trans- 
vaal signed a treaty with Portugal regulating the 
recruitment of native labor, the railway and port of 
Lorenzo Marques traffic, commercial relations, and 
the customs question. The treaty guarantees to 
Lorenzo Marques from fifty to fifty-five per cent, 
of the maritime traffic of the Rand and other princi- 
pal centers of the^Transvaal. In return, Portuguese 
East Africa allows the Transvaal to recruit labor, 
6 8i 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

The treaty caused a violent outburst in Natal. 
The municipal council of Durban cabled to London, 
demanding that the treaty be denounced. But 
London turned a deaf ear. Salvation in this case, 
as always, was for the Home Government not to 
override decisions made by a colony for her own 
interests. Such a course would be justified only if 
the colony were acting in a way prejudicial to 
imperial interests. 

When they saw they could get no help from home, 
the inhabitants of Natal, who had not the strong 
racial feeling that was working for union in Cape 
Colony, decided that the future lay in agreement 
with and not in opposition to the rich and powerful 
inland neighbor. 

Union, as is often the case between nations as 
well as between individuals, came from seeing the 
folly of conflict rather than from feeling the desire 
for harmony. 

a flourishing colony with extensive semi- 
independent native areas inconveniently 
placed: the problem of natal 

Natal ceased to belong to the Cape of Good Hope 
over fifty years before the formation of the South 
African Commonwealth, and after 1856, was a dis- 
tinct British colony. It is separated from Cape 
Colony on the south of Griqualand East, in which 
the native population is very large. Between 
Natal and the Orange Free State Hes Basutoland. 
Between Natal and the Transvaal are Zululand and 

82 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

Swaziland, which form the angle of the valuable 
little Delagoa Bay comer of Portuguese East 
Africa. From Durban, the port on the Indian 
Ocean, a railway runs into Griqualand East, by way 
of Pietermaritsburg. But it does not join up with 
the Cape Railway. Another line, running north- 
west, bifurcates at Ladysmith, one branch going 
west into the Orange Free State, and the other 
due north to Pretoria. The Orange Free State branch 
makes a semicircular curve around Basutoland to 
Bloemfontein, which is almost directly west of 
Pietermaritsburg. The Transvaal branch skirts 
Zululand and enters the Transvaal without passing 
through the Free State. 

Basutoland is a high plateau of nearly twelve 
thousand square miles, broken by several mountain 
ranges. It contains the headwaters of the Orange 
River. The protectorate is not an integral por- 
tion of the South African Commonwealth. Like 
Bechuanaland, it is under the direct control of the 
Crown. But its Resident Commissioner depends 
upon the High Commissioner for South Africa. In all 
this territory, larger than Belgium and as large as 
Holland, there are hardly more than a thousand 
Europeans among a native population of over four 
hundred thousand. European settlement, in fact, is 
prohibited. The native government is exercised 
by chiefs, who owe allegiance to a paramount chief. 

Swaziland, from 1903 to 1906, was controlled by 
the Transvaal. But since 1906, its government is 
like that of Basutoland. There are only a thousand 
whites among a population of over one hundred 

83 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

thousand. The British Crown has kept the authority 
over these native regions because the whites of the 
neighboring colonies have not shown that they are 
capable of governing justly homogeneous native 
populations. ^ 

Zululand, since 1897, has unfortunately formed 
an integral part of Natal. Between the Tugela River 
and the Swaziland and Portuguese boundary, the 
population is practically all native. Except along 
the coast and on the western edge, Zululand is 
served by no railway. 

The European population of Natal has grown 
three hundred per cent, in the last forty years, while 
the native population has increased only fifty 
per cent. But even now among the million and a 
quarter inhabitants of Natal, there are less than one 
hundred thousand Europeans and about one hundred 
and fifty thousand Indians and Chinese. The 

* In 1907, taking heart at the interest and sympathy aroused in 
England over the Zulu question, a deputation of native chiefs visited 
London, although they had previously been informed that their mis- 
sion would be fruitless, to expose the griefs and discontent of the 
Swaziland natives. In 1909, when Lord Selbome visited Swaziland, 
in reply to the protest of the native chiefs of their unwillingness to 
enter the South African Union, the High Commissioner warned 
them that amalgamation was inevitable. In the same year, Lord 
Selbome opened the National Council of Basutoland. The as- 
sembled chiefs told him that they were afraid of being incorporated 
forcibly in the Union. Lord Selborne replied that Basutoland would 
sooner or later have to come into the Union, but that the British 
Crown would see to it that native rights inland and all other matters 
would be fully guaranteed. There is no doubt about the fear, 
resulting from Zululand's unhappy experience, among the natives 
of the protectorates of coming under the Government of the South 
African colonists. 

84 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

native population numbers almost a million. Natal 
has not only the largest proportion of black popula- 
tion of the provinces of the South African Common- 
wealth, but it is cut off from its neighbors by 
territories wholly native, and in two of which the na- 
tives have managed to maintain semi-independence. 
Natal's Indian and Chinese problems, owing to the 
long settlement of Asiatic elements in the colony 
and their great number (as we have just said, they 
outnumber the Europeans), have been all along 
totally different from those of the neighboring 
colonies. ^ Similarly, Natal's native problem has for 
the British taken the place in Natal of the Boer 
problem in the other colonies. 

Zululand wars and "punitive expeditions" were 
being carried on for twenty years before the in- 
corporation of 1897. The troubles of Natal did not 
end then. After a long lull, a revolt broke out in 
northern Zululand in the beginning of 1906. The 
natives refused to pay the poll tax. The attack of 
armed natives upon police in February led to the 
proclamation of martial law and a punitive expedi- 
tion. Twelve natives, who had murdered a white 
policeman, were sentenced to death by court martial. 
Lord Elgin, Colonial Secretary, interfered by cable 
to urge a retrial by civil court on account of public 
opinion in England. The Natal Ministry at once 
resigned. The colonists bitterly denounced the 
interference of the Home Government. The Colonial 

^ In 1908, the Indians of Natal subscribed the necessary funds 
to carry on a campaign in the Transvaal and in England on behalf 
of the Transvaal Indians. 

85 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Office withdrew its opposition, after learning that 
the Governor of Natal approved the sentence, and the 
natives were executed on April 2d. The incident, 
however, led to the first important clash between 
advanced Radicals and Imperialists in the New 
Liberal Parliament. Just as in Germany, the 
Socialists defended the natives, and claimed that the 
authority of the British Crown, by means of British 
troops, was being executed far away from the con- 
trolling influence of public opinion in England, to 
oppress and take vengeance upon a weak African 
race for the benefit of colonists. The Government, 
between two fires, declared that the matter of the 
executions had been gone into thoroughly, that 
the first telegram of Lord Elgin had not been in the 
nature of a remonstrance but rather a request for 
information, and that when full information was 
received, the Cabinet realized the justice and 
necessity of the sentence. 

After the execution the Zulus renewed their re- 
sistance to white authority. Several chiefs led the 
rebels with great energy. The British troops, 
seconded by Natal militia, carried on a ruthless war 
of extermination against the Zulus, and killed without 
mercy those who were found with arms in hand. 
The Zulus lost three thousand five hundred in a little 
over two months. When one criticizes the campaign 
of the Germans against the Hereros, which was just 
drawing to a close at this time, it must not be for- 
gotten that the British campaign in Natal, in pro- 
portion to the rebel effectives in the field, was just as 
merciless and just as disastrous to the Zulus as the 

86 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

German campaign to the Hereros. So disgraceful 
was the conduct of the Natal troops that the Bishop 
of Zululand felt impelled, much against his will, to 
publish the information he had gathered of robbing 
kraals and native women, stealing stock, and shoot- 
ing natives and throwing their bodies out to rot. 
By the end of July over three million dollars had 
been spent in putting down the uprising. 

A commission was appointed to inquire into the 
reason for the growing gulf between whites and 
blacks, and to find if the natives had just ground for 
discontent against the whites. The report of the 
commission in July, 1907, was unanimous in declaring 
that the natives hated the "whites and distrusted the 
Government. Government action seemed to have 
done nothing at all to raise the economic and moral 
level of the blacks. The rebellion was due to a 
desire to return to the old mode of tribal and family 
life. Was this not natural, especially as the whites 
had not, by their new and different method of 
government, done anything appreciable to benefit 
the blacks? 

In the autumn of 1907, it was believed that 
Dinizulu and other chiefs were preparing a new 
rebellion. Dinizulu, when the Natal Government 
threatened to send an expedition against him, 
surrendered voluntarily. A new Governor was sent 
to Natal. Early in 1908 he pardoned the rank and 
file of those who had been implicated in the rebellion. 
But Dinizulu remained in jail. An English advocate, 
who came out to defend him, found that the attitude 
of the local authorities made impossible a fair trial 

87 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

under English law. It was charged that the Natal 
authorities continued martial law in Zululand to 
protect local officials, who had been guilty of whip- 
ping and shooting natives, and to prevent Dinizulu 
from getting witnesses for his defense. In 1909, 
after a long trial, Dinizulu was found guilty of 
"harboring rebels," and sentenced to four years' 
imprisonment. The Natal Government had been 
unable to establish his complicity in the rebellion. 

There was still disaffection of a serious character 
in Zululand when the South African Commonwealth 
was formed. Federation improved the chances of 
the Zulus to receive fair treatment, which they 
certainly never had had from the Natal colonists. 
The geographical position of Natal, and the large 
proportion of native tribes of semi-independent 
character surrounding the colony, made the task of 
government extremely difficult. But there can be 
no doubt that the white men acted exclusively for 
their own interest, and that when the natives pro- 
tested against the collection of taxes, the benefit of 
which was never proved to them, they were treated as 
rebels, tracked down like wild beasts, and killed in 
their own country. 

In this brief review of Natal relations with the 
Zulus, I have tried to be perfectly fair, and state 
simply the facts. They are very sad. When one 
considers the better fortune of the Basutos, neighbors 
of the Zulus, and the favorable opinion held of their 
Paramount Chief, Letsie, and his recent successor 
Griffith, by the British authorities, the wisdom of 
keeping native populations, where they are homo- 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

geneous and considerable in number, directly under 
the control of the Crown, is clearly demonstrated. 
British military and civil officials, who came out 
from England and who bring to the treatment of 
native problems and the management of the weaker 
races splendid ideals of fairness and justice, have 
always succeeded in keeping peace and winning the 
respect, if not the affection, of native tribes, and the 
confidence of their chiefs. But where natives are 
put under the control of colonists, and at the mercy 
of local militia officers and men, who are swayed by 
prejudice and vengeance, the results are what they 
were in the Zulu expedition of 1906 — a disgrace to 
civilization and Christianity. One cannot insist too 
strongly upon the difference between public school 
and university men from England and men who have 
risen to the top in the African colonies, often by 
doubtful means. The latter are too frequently 
"bounders" of the worst sort, intolerant and in- 
tolerable when they have a little authority in their 
hands. 

The story of federation is reserved for a later 
chapter. But this summary of the years of recon- 
struction in South Africa would be incomplete 
without a word about the two men who represented 
the British Government in the delicate office of High 
Commissioner during a period when courage and 
insight and tact were the sine qua non of success in 
piloting safely the four colonies to the harbor of 
federation. It was a decade when recalcitrant 
Boers and fanatical loyalists were doing all in their 

89 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

power to obstruct the course. Lord Milner repre- 
sented the British Crown until March 1905. He 
resigned on the eve of the granting of responsible 
government to the Transvaal. Lord Selborne was 
High Commissioner during the four years before the 
establishment of the Commonwealth. 

Lord Selborne 's resignation, coming just before 
the Union was formed, was not regarded in South 
Africa as being due to his wife's health. The Liberal 
Government was anxious to put Herbert Gladstone 
in some suitable post outside of England, and Lord 
Selborne fell in with their plans. Lord Selborne 
was not at all of the same caliber as Milner. But 
he was a new broom and had not been involved in 
the Boer War or in the years of crisis and conflict 
that followed. His popiilarity with the Dutch was 
largely due to the great and intelligent interest he 
took in agriculture, which led to an appreciable 
promotion of the well-being of the Boers. He did 
not make the mistake of considering railway and 
other economic problems too largely from the 
industrial point of view. 

General Botha has probably since regretted saying 
in 1908 that "Lord Milner's rule was the most 
unfortunate thing that had ever happened to the 
Transvaal." Many statements, due to the political 
passion of the moment, cannot be fairly held as the 
real judgment of the one who made them, even at the 
time they were made. For the sake of assuring 
the rallying of all elements to the Imperial program 
that he kept constantly in mind, Lord Milner may 
have used his official position too strongly against 

90 



THE BOER WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION 

the Afrikander party, of which General Botha was 
the leader. But the present soundly established 
prosperity of the Transvaal is largely due to Lord 
Milner's initiative. The German in him betrayed 
itself sometimes in a political attitude that was open 
to objection. But it enabled him at the same time 
to lay the foundations for the educational, agricul- 
tural, and industrial development of the Transvaal, 
Lord Milner established a flourishing agricultural 
school, with research laboratories and model farms, 
which is changing the whole agricultural system. 
In the face of great difficulties he inaugurated 
educational reforms with the hand of a master. 
He had the financial sense of a Cromer in studying 
and taking lessons from the budget. His resig- 
nation showed keen political insight and at the same 
time self-abnegation, Just when the work of years 
was coming to fruition, he left to others the joy 
of realization. For he saw that his unpopularity 
among the Dutch was retarding reconciliation. Botha 
and Smuts and Merriman were ready to cooperate 
with a British official. But, even if they had been 
willing personally to work together with Milner, 
they could not have drawn, their supporters with 
them. So Lord Milner insisted that his resignation 
be accepted, not because of ill health, or because he 
had lost his grip, but because he knew that another 
would find it easier to carry out the program he had 
inaugurated. 



91 



CHAPTER IV 

THE TWO INDEPENDENT STATES: 
LIBERIA AND ABYSSINIA 

PRACTICALLY every part of Africa has been 
brought under some form of European 
administrative control, with fixed bound- 
aries, during the last fifteen years. Only two 
small states are still independent. Liberia in the 
west and Abyssinia in the east have succeeded 
in escaping "assimilation" or "protection." But 
during the past twenty years neither has been with- 
out its days of anxiety. Liberia owes her independ- 
ence to the fact that she is the one protege of the 
United States in Africa. Abyssinia was saved by the 
courage of her late Emperor Menelik, who alone of all 
African sovereigns was able to contest successfully 
the armed invasion of a European Power. He had 
the luck to try the fortune of arms with the unwarlike 
Italians. Abyssinia has since escaped through the 
mutual jealousy of Italy, Great Britain, and France, 
whose colonies surround her on all sides. The two 
independent states hold less than three and one-half 
per cent, of the area, and about two and one-half per 
cent, of the p6pulation of Africa. 

92 



LIBERIA AND ABYSSINIA 

LIBERIA 

Liberia was constituted as an independent repub- 
lic in 1847 by freed American slaves, the first of whom 
had settled on the West African coast during the 
administration of James Monroe, twenty -five years 
before. The capital is called Monrovia in memory of 
the initial settlement. Liberia is the only country 
in Africa where electors must be exclusively of African 
blood. The United States undertook, by the treaty 
of 1862, to aid Liberia, when necessary, to preserve 
her constitutional form of government and her 
independent existence. In 1885, boundaries were 
settled with Great Britain in regard to Sierra Leone 
Colony on the north, and in 1892 with France for 
the frontier with the Ivory Coast Colony. 

For the first half -century of Liberia's existence, 
little that was satisfactory and definite could be 
established concerning the viability and success of 
the experiment of a negro state. It was only when 
Sierra Leone and other British West African colonies 
began to develop, and when France began to organize 
and consolidate her "spheres of influence" into col- 
onies with local administrative and economic organ- 
ization, that a comparison could be made, and a 
conclusion reached. Events since 1 900 seem to prove 
conclusively that Liberia, under negro control, has 
little hope of becoming the rich and prosperous mod- 
ern state that could exist on the West African coast. 
For the country possesses, climatically and in wealth 
of soil and forest, practically the same conditions that 
one finds in British and French and German West 

93 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Africa. The development since 1900 of Sierra Leone, 
the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Guinea, 
Togoland, Dahomey, Nigeria, and Kamerun are set 
forth in this book. He who reads, sees ! 

There are about twelve thousand negroes of Amer- 
ican descent in Liberia, and about fifty thousand of 
the population of nearly two millions, including these 
twelve thousand, can be said to be civilized, i. e., 
amenable to constituted authority. Liberians effec- 
tively control twenty to twenty-five miles inland 
from the coast. They have few good roads, and no 
railways. In 1905, the Government was bankrupt. 
The only portion of revenue not yet mortgaged was 
the sale of postage stamps. The trade with Great 
Britain was largely in spirits; and the drink traf- 
fic was demoralizing the country. The spread of 
drunkenness among the wild native tribes of the 
hinterland was checked only by the opportune 
appearance of the Mohammedan propaganda. 

The lack of effective control of the natives in the 
interior became a serious international question 
when France and Great Britain began to penetrate 
and organize administratively adjacent regions. 
For recalcitrant natives took refuge in Liberian 
territory, and year after year raiders from Liberia 
seriously upset the normal conditions France and 
Great Britain were working to establish within their 
spheres. The anarchy of the Liberian hinterland 
became intolerable between 1905 and 1910, and the 
powerlessness of the Liberian Government to exercise 
effective control over the interior tribes might have 
led to the partition of Liberia, had not the United 

94 



LIBERIA AND ABYSSINIA 

States been willing, with the consent and goodwill 
of Great Britain, France, and Germany, to send a 
gunboat to Monrovia, and to offer to supervise the 
reorganization of the Government on a solid financial 
basis. In 1910, a commission sent out by the United 
States recommended that the United States take 
over the debt of Liberia, recreate the administration, 
use good offices for settling frontier disputes with 
France and England, and consider the question of 
having a coaling station on the coast. Both Liberia 
and the United States declared that there was no 
question of an American protectorate. But the 
United States undertook to reorganize the military 
and frontier police forces, and an international com- 
mission, under an American official, took charge of 
the revenues of Liberia. The following year a loan 
of nearly two million dollars was subscribed by Amer- 
ican, British, French, and German banks to put 
Liberia on her feet, and give her a fresh start. 

But the anarchy of the interior and the raids across 
the frontier had cost Liberia about two thousand 
square miles of territory, which was taken over by 
France in a new frontier agreement signed in 191 1. 
A "rectification" of frontier on the north was also 
made with Great Britain during the same year to the 
advantage of Sierra Leone. The British colony had 
already occupied the territory, which it was claimed 
was essential to Sierra Leone's internal peace: 
Liberia's compensation was a small sum of money. 

In 1913, the British soap firm of Lever Brothers 
leased twelve thousand square miles (about one- 
fourth of the territory of Liberia) for five dollars a 

95 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

square mile. The firm was to have the monopoly of 
gathering and preparing the fruit of the oil palm, the 
uncontrolled use of the land, and the exclusive priv- 
ilege of trading with natives. Germany regarded 
this agreement, which was a virtual transference of 
sovereignty to British subjects, as an infringement 
of treaty stipulations, and entered a protest against 
it. 

It seems perfectly clear that after the present war, 
an effective American protectorate will be the only 
means of keeping Liberia alive — unless Monroe's 
doctrine prevents the salvation of Monroe's colony. 

ABYSSINIA 

The recent history of Abyssinia is a little more 
encouraging than that of Liberia, thanks to the fact 
that at the moment of peril from European encroach- 
ment a fearless, intelligent, and energetic ruler was 
at the head of the nation. 

The Abyssinians are not a seafaring people, and the 
territories to the north and east and south-east along 
the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean 
nominally acknowledged Turco-Egyptian sovereignty 
before the British invasion of Egypt. They are 
inhabited by Arabic Moslem tribes, in close contact 
with Mecca, while the Abyssinians are mostly 
Christians. After the rise of the Mahdi in the Sudan, 
and the British withdrawal in 1884, Italy occupied 
the Arabic-speaking territory on the north, and a 
large piece of Somaliland on the south-east. France 
made effective the occupation, instead of proclaimed 

96 



LIBERIA AND ABYSSINIA 

in principle some twenty years earlier, of the western 
shore of the straits leading from the Gulf of Aden into 
the Red Sea. England took over from the wreck of 
the Sudan a portion of the southern side of the Gulf 
of Aden. The fortunes of these territories, though 
intimately bound up with Abyssinia, are treated in 
another chapter. 

Italy, new to colonial problems, felt that the mo- 
ment was opportune to join her portion of Somaliland 
with Eritrea by extending her power over Abyssinia. 
In 1889 a treaty was signed with Emperor Menelik 
in which Italian trickery introduced an all-important 
discrepancy between the Italian text and the Am- 
haric text. The Italian text bound Abyssinia to deal 
with the European Powers through Italy : while this 
was optional in the text that Emperor Menelik could 
read. When he discovered how his good faith had 
been imposed upon, Menelik protested against the 
treaty in a powerful letter to Queen Victoria in 1893, 
probably at the instigation of France and Russia. 
But Abyssinia was given only "moral support" by 
Europe. War with Italy resulted, and ended in a 
disastrous defeat of the Italians at Adowa in 1896. 
Italy was compelled to sign a new treaty at 
Adis Abeba, recognizing the complete independence 
of Abyssinia. This treaty afterwards received in- 
ternational recognition. Menelik's reputation in 
Europe was great. For he acted admirably towards 
his vanquished enemy, and did not make the mis- 
take of believing that all Europeans were like the 
Italians, watching to take advantage of him — and 
supported by a weak army ! : 

7 97 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

During the trying period that followed the recon- 
quest of the Sudan, he cooperated with the British 
in their effort to reestablish order in the territories 
contiguous to Abyssinia, gave a British syndicate a 
gold-mining concession, and allowed Britivsh engineers 
to inspect the Sobat region and the White Nile 
sources as a possible route for the Cape-Cairo Rail- 
way. In 1 901, he combined with the British in 
military operations against the Mullah Mohammed 
along the SomaUland frontier. He was always open 
to suggestions as to ways and means of stopping 
gun-running and slave-trading. 

In the extension of European influence in Africa, 
native rulers have come into conflict with European 
Powers, and have lost their independence for two 
reasons. First, they have not understood the im- 
portance of fixing boundaries, and have lacked the 
power or will to prevent raiding from their territories 
into those under European control. European ad- 
ministrators, in order to pacify the territories they 
governed, had to look to the sources of disorder. 
This led punitive expeditions on farther than origin- 
ally intended. Native sultans and kings and tribal 
chiefs who could not keep order in the European sense 
of the word were compelled to accept "protection." 
As no native sultan or king or chief could ever keep 
order in the European sense, Africa gradually fell 
under European control. Second, they had been 
the enemies of "progress" in the European sense of 
the word. Not wanting to develop their countries 
themselves, they have refused to allow outsiders to 
do so, and have resisted prospectors and concession- 
ers 



LIBERIA AND ABYSSINIA 

hunters and traders until complaints of the outsiders 
have ended by embroiling them with the outsiders* 
Government — which was generally just waiting for 
the chance. The history of Kruger and Stein is 
no different from that of a thousand petty native 
rulers. 

Menelik impressed his neighbors with his good 
faith, and never gave them a loophole to encroach 
upon his kingdom. He did his best to prevent 
trouble arising for them from Abyssinian territory, 
and he was always willing to have frontiers exactly 
delimited. He welcomed civilizing influences, and 
did not turn a deaf ear to concession-hunters. But 
he made it the cardinal principle of his dealings with 
foreigners to have concessions arranged by treaty 
with governments and not with individuals. Thus 
he put the Powers on their honor not to aUow 
Abyssinia to be cheated! 

In 1900, the northern frontier dispute with Italy 
was settled by tacitly allowing Italy to occupy a 
portion of the high plateau, without which Eritrea 
would have been hardly worth while for Italy to 
hold. In 1902, a treaty with the British fixed the 
boundary of the Sudan, gave the British the right to 
construct a railway through Abyssinian territory to 
connect Uganda and the Sudan, and pledged Abys- 
sinia to grant no concessions and undertake no works 
that would obstruct the flow of tributaries into the 
Nile. This made feasible Sir William Garstin's pro- 
ject of utilizing Lake Tsana for irrigation, and se- 
cured the fertility of the Blue Nile regions. 

Dr. Rosen went to Adis Abeba in 1904 as special 

99 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

envoy of the Kaiser. He was accompanied by an 
escort of cavalry, especially chosen for their height 
and clothed resplendently. The showiness of the 
mission led all the world to suppose that its signifi- 
cance was political rather than commercial. But 
Germany did not then try, nor has she since tried, to 
secure more in Abyssinia than equality of treatment 
with other nations. The German and Austrian 
comm^ercial treaties were signed the following year, 
and have expired since the beginning of the present 
war. As Abyssinia is surrounded on all sides by the 
enemies of Germany, the question is bound to come 
up at the Peace Conference, or very soon after, 
whether the agreements entered into by Great Bri- 
tain, France, and Italy compel the Abyssinians to 
accept for transit and shipment at their ports goods 
to and from Abyssinia irrespective of ownership and 
destination. 

The desire to extend into every sphere of colonial 
activity the spirit of the Agreement of 1904 led 
France and Great Britain to negotiate an Abyssinian 
Convention, to which Italy adhered. The independ- 
ence and territorial integrity of Abyssinia were 
guaranteed by the three Powers, and the sovereign 
rights of the Emperor were to be respected. No con- 
cessions were to be granted to one Power prejudicial 
to the interests of the other two. No matter what 
internal complications might arise in Abyssinia, in- 
tervention could come only as the result of a common 
understanding, and limited to the protection of the 
legations and the lives and property of foreigners. 
The neighboring territorial interests of the three con- 

100 



LIBERIA AND ABYSSINIA 

tracting Powers, and the possible effect upon them 
of Abyssinian internal disorders, were set forth and 
mutually recognized. The railway line from Dji- 
bouti to Adis Abeba should be owned by a French 
company, but equal privileges over the line and at the 
port should be given to the subjects of the other two 
Powers. The railways that might be built west of 
Adis Abeba were to be constructed by Great Britain, 
and that connecting the two Italian colonies from 
north to south by Italy. Great Britain was to be 
allowed a railway through Abyssinia from her Somali- 
land to the Sudan. Any of the contracting Powers 
could veto any agreement made by one of the others 
with Abyssinia, should the Power judge the' agree- 
ment prejudicial to her interests. 

This agreement, like many others that have been 
made between European states concerning African 
and Asiatic interests, has absolutely no international 
or national sanction. Turkey, Persia, Morocco, 
Egypt, China, Siam have had the same experience as 
Abyssinia. Their present and their future have been 
tentatively disposed of with no consideration what- 
ever either for their wishes or their interests. Nor 
have the agreements, as a general rule, been sub- 
mitted for discussion and approval to the Parlia- 
ments of the nations which have made them. What 
is worst of all, nations that are not a party to the 
agreements, and that have not been consulted in 
their making, may find in some future emergency 
that a situation of fact, with no legal or moral sanc- 
tion, has been established that is wholly contrary to 
their interests. So far as I know, the Anglo-Franco- 

loi 



THE NEW MAP OP AFRICA 

Italian Agreement of 1905 has not injured the inter- 
ests of any individual or nation in Abyssinia, or the 
interests of Abyssinia herself. But it might easily 
have done so. Perhaps it secretly has done so. It 
certainly will do so after this war, unless the prin- 
ciple of international sanction for agreements of 
this character be established. 

^'In October, 1907, Menelik issued a decree con- 
stituting a cabinet on the European model, and 
appointed ministers for the various departments. 
The following month he enjoined free compulsory 
education for all boys up to twelve. The State was 
to provide schools and teachers. Cabinet councils 
were begun, but the education decree could not be 
very widely and effectively enforced. Ever since 
that time there has been, in spite of internal troubles, 
steady, even if slight, progress. ^ 

Just at the time of his ambitious projects, Menelik 
had a stroke, and he gradually became paralyzed. 
Frequent to the point of becoming a joke were the 
newspaper reports, generally from Italy, during the 
period 1907 to 191 3, announcing the death of Mene- 

' The will of Lady Meux, who bequeathed her collection of 
Ethiopian MSS. to Emperor Menelik and his successors, made a great 
stir in 191 1. Scholars were indignant that the precious parchments 
should go to a place where they would be inaccessible and in danger 
of destruction (although they had been preserved there for over a 
thousand years). But there is something splendid in the Puritanism 
of the noblewoman who considered herself the holder of stolen goods 
and under obligation to make restitution. The MSS. were part of 
the plunder of the British Expedition of 1868. What would happen 
to the British Museum and the Louvre and other "collections," if 
the public conscience became as sensitive about enjoying the results 
of thievery as did Lady Meux's! 

102 



LIBERIA AND ABYSSINIA 

lik. Each time they were contradicted, and when 
he finally passed away in December, 191 3, many 
newspapers refused to publish once more the familiar 
biography. 

Menelik's long illness was a great misfortune to 
Abyssinia, and it is still too soon to estimate the 
injury done by the anarchy of the regency to the 
Kingdom surrounded by land-hungry neighbors. 
In 1909, Lidj Yeassu, Menelik's grandson, who was 
thirteen, and the husband of the seven-year-old 
Princess Romaine, granddaughter of the old Emperor 
Johannes, was chosen as the successor. He, by his 
own blood and that of his wife, would reconcile 
the rival factions of the Imperial family. Not- 
withstanding the heralded harmony, civil war broke 
out, and dragged on, with varying fortunes, for 
several years. 

Italy feared the breaking away from authority of 
the tribes on her Eritrean frontier, especially after 
the Tripolitan War began, and there was some ap- 
prehension of raiding in the Sudan. The anarchy 
caused no particular difference in the Somaliland 
situation, because Great Britain already had her 
hands full there, and the responsibility for the Mullah 
could in no way be chargeable to Abyssinian unrest. 
The troubles in Abyssinia seem to have been con- 
fined to the rival court factions : for the country as a 
whole remained quiet throughout the years of Mene- 
lik's illness. However, there was apprehension in 
Adis Abeba just before the outbreak of the European 
War over the sudden and inexplicable strengthening 
of Italian forces in Eritrea. Was Italy going to 

103 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA ' 

"hold up" the young King for another slice— the 
third it would be since the battle of Adowa — of the 
northern plateau? 

What effect the war is going to have on the fortunes 
of Abyssinia is unknown. Certainly there is no 
ground for attacking the territorial or political in- 
tegrity of the country. For Abyssinia has not lent 
herself to German intrigues, and given cause for the 
Allies to punish her. What propaganda against the 
British and Italians can be traced to Abyssinia, has 
its origin in purely Moslem centers. The bulk of the 
Abyssinians, still Christian in spite of the great wave 
of Islam that has been sweeping over their country, 
have not believed in the possibility of a Turkish 
reconquest of Egypt and the Sudan. My dear friend, 
the late Col. C. H. M. Doughty-Wylie, V. C, British 
Consul at Adis Abeba, wrote me at the end of the 
first winter of the war that conditions in Abyssinia 
gave him absolutely no cause for present or future 
alarm, and that he was "consumed with impatience" 
so far away from the war. Two months later he fell 
in the first landing at the Dardanelles. 

At the end of September, 191 6, a movement that 
had long been gathering force and popular support 
came to a head. While Emperor Lidj, who is just 
approaching his majority, was at Harar — probably 
he had fled in fear of assassination — an assembly of 
the principal Abyssinian chiefs at Adis Abeba voted 
to dethrone him, and elected Uizorosso Uditu, a 
daughter of Menelik, Empress of Abyssinia. The 
patriarch of the Abyssinian Church, Mathias, sol- 
emnly pronounced Lidj an apostate, and unbound 

104 



' LIBERIA AND ABYSSINIA 

all his chiefs and subjects and his army officers from 
their oath of allegiance. The charge against Lidj 
seems to be that he favors the adoption of Islam as 
the religion of state. 

If they had been inclined to listen to the Turco- 
Germans, the Abyssinians could have made much 
trouble for the Allies. It remains to be seen whether 
their attitude will receive its proper reward. 



105 



CHAPTER V 
BRITISH POLICY IN SOMALILAND 

SOMALILAND is the most eastern portion of the 
African continent, comprising the coast lands 
of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean in 
the peninsula that ends in Cape Guardafui. It is in- 
habited by nomad tribes of mixed Negro and Arab 
blood. The Arab strain is marked in the tribes on 
the north side in the French and British spheres. The 
tribes become more African in the Italian sphere. The 
inhabitants of the Juba region in the colony portion 
of Italian Somaliland (Benadir) are black. But 
throughout Somaliland the religion is Moslem, and 
the tribal characteristics and customs are more akin 
to those of the Arabian peninsula than to Africa. 
This whole region was nominally a portion of the 
Ottoman Empire, and fell to Egypt when the Khe- 
dives threw off the authority of the Turkish Sultan. 
The abandonment of the Sudan by Egypt in 1884 
left Somaliland without legal political suzerainty. 

Great Britain had too recently become Egypt's 
protector, and was too uncertain of her own position 
and authority in Egypt to lay claim to a vast, in- 
choate and imperfectly known territory. She was 
careful only to have to make sure that no "other 

106 



BRITISH POLICY IN SOMALILAND 

European Power should instal itseK along the shore 
of the gulf opposite Aden. So Italy took the Indian 
Ocean coast line, and France occupied the African 
side of the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb. Invoking a 
treaty made with the ruler of Obock in 1862, she 
extended her sovereignty around the bay to Zeila, 
the western end of the British sphere. These three 
Somaliland colonies, with their protectorates, and the 
ItaHan colony of Eritrea, north of French Somaliland, 
shut off Abyssinia from the coast. For twenty years 
their hinterland boundaries were unsettled. But 
after the Anglo-French accord of 1904, France, Great 
Britain, and Italy arrived at an understanding con- 
cerning their common frontiers, their boundaries with 
Abyssinia, and their economic and political relations 
with the inland Christian monarchy. 

The French made a port at Djibouti in 1888, and 
started to build a railway south to tap Abyssinia. 
In the minds of French Imperialists Djibouti began to 
assume a great importance in the last decade of the 
nineteenth century: for they dreamed of a railway 
across Africa from west to east, passing from Lake 
Tchad, through Abeshr and El Fashr, by the Upper 
Nile Valley and the Sobat River to Adis Abeba, and 
ending at Djibouti. This dream was rudely shattered 
by the Fashoda incident. Since then, French Somali- 
land has become content to be an outlet for Abys- 
sinia trade, and to develop its own resources. Owing 
to its fortunate position, its very good harbor, and 
its railway, the colony has prospered. There are 
coast fisheries and important salt mines. In the year 
before the War of 1914, over four hundred steamers 

107 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

entered Djibouti, and the import and export trade 
from Abyssinia reached eight million dollars. So 
long as France remains friends with Great Britain 
and Italy, the colony has no political importance. 

Nor has Italian Somaliland been of international 
political interest since Abyssinia was made inviolate 
by Italy's 1905 agreement with France and Great 
Britain. Italian Somaliland could have played 
a r61e in African history, only had Italy remained 
faithful to the Triple Alliance. For then, the Ger- 
mans would have had a foothold to injure the British 
in the Sudan and East Africa, and to oppose Franco- 
British interests in Abyssinia. 

British Somaliland, however, has had an interesting 
history since 1900, which has not been without strong 
influence upon the general colonial policy of Great 
Britain. In narrating this history, we must remem- 
ber that British policy in Somaliland had been guided 
not by the advantages to be gained from developing 
the Protectorate, but by the geographical posi- 
tion of British Somaliland, which has given it an im- 
portance far beyond its present or potential economic 
value. It is not far from Aden, and its inhabitants are 
in constant communication with the tribes of the 
Arabic peninsula, both on the Red Sea and Persian 
Gulf sides of the desert. Because of the position of 
Imperial Britain as a Moslem Power, the British 
have been anxious about their authority in Somali- 
land, and have made great efforts and sacrifices, and 
incurred great expense, to maintain it. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there 
arose in British Somaliland a menace to British 

108 



BRITISH POLICY IN SOMALILAND 

authority in the spreading political power of Mullah 
Mohammed Abdullah, the son of an Ogdan shepherd, 
who had founded a Mahdi sect near Berbera ten 
years before. After Kitchener's reentry into the 
Sudan, it was vital for the pacification of the 
southern provinces that no source of Moslem 
fanaticism find its way, through the Islamic pro- 
paganda in Abyssinia, into the valleys of the Blue 
and White Nile. So the suppression of the Mullah 
was decided upon, and an agreement was made 
between Great Britain and Abyssinia for, a com- 
mon action, in which the frontier should be con- 
sidered as non-existent. The Mullah's forces were 
broken up, but he escaped. In 1902, he once more 
appeared in British Somaliland with larger strength 
than ever. A British force, which followed him into 
the Haud Desert, was badly defeated. Troops had 
to be sent from Aden and India, and the question 
arose as to whether a serious expedition should be 
undertaken to destroy the Mullah, regardless of 
expense or of loss of life. 

While the Foreign Office was debating, the Mullah 
sent a message to General Manning, demanding a 
recognition of his sphere of influence and removal 
of restriction on the importation of arms. A hundred 
National Scouts of the ostracized Boers volunteered 
for service. Italy allowed the use of her territory for 
the passage of British troops and patrolled her Somali 
coast to prevent the importation of arms. 

During the year 1903, the operations were incon- 
clusive. The British had three severe setbacks, and 
the Mullah raided at will. In some mysterious way 

109 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the Mullah seemed to be getting all the arms and 
ammunition he wanted ; Abyssinian cooperation was 
strikingly ineffective. 

In the face of bitter criticism, the Foreign Office 
decided on a policy of "watchful waiting " throughout 
1904. The Indian troops were sent home, and the 
British and Italian Governments arranged to give 
the Mullah grazing rights, in return for his pledge 
to keep the peace. The Mullah agreed to allow 
freedom of trade in his sphere, except in the case of 
slaves and arms. 

In 1905, the British Government laid down the 
policy that there was no obligation to conquer the 
Mullah, so long as he remained tolerably peace- 
keeping. Great Britain would not allow tribes under 
her protection to be molested, but they, on their side, 
should do everything in their power to defend them- 
selves. They could not, however, do this unless they 
were given arms and ammunition. But would arm- 
ing these tribes be a violation of the Brussels Con- 
ference Act, which prohibited allowing arms to go to 
natives who were not under effective administrative 
control? The debates on the subject showed clearly 
the unwillingness of the Cabinet to sanction the 
expenditure required to organize administratively 
territories from which there could be no reasonable 
hope of financial return. The revenue for 1904 had 
decreased nearly £5000, and the expenditure had in- 
creased £25,000. The extension of the French railway 
from Djibouti into Abyssinia had^seriously diminished 
the trade through Zeila. 

For several years the Home Government policy 
no 



BRITISH POLICY IN SOMALILAND 

seemed to be justified by the absence of serious incon- 
venience or disturbance. In 1907, the country was 
normal enough for two EngUsh ladies, accompanied 
only by native servants, to spend several months 
at big game shooting in the interior. But in 1909, 
the Mullah again became active, and declared that 
there could be peace between him and the British 
only if his authority in the hinterland were not 
threatened. Reinforcements were sent from India, 
and a detachment of the King's African Rifles from 
Mombasa. A Military Governor was appointed for 
Somaliland. But Parliament was opposed to opera- 
tions in the interior. Without sufficient forces to 
insure safety, it seemed only inviting trouble to main- 
tain the advanced posts. They were withdrawn. 

In March, 1910, notwithstanding raids on friendly 
tribes and several small victories for the Mullah, the 
Government decided to withdraw to the coast. In- 
terior posts were given up. Peace did not follow 
this withdrawal. It was naturally interpreted as 
a confession of weakness. The Mullah had more 
prestige than ever. There was no more truth in the 
reports of his death than in those of the death of 
Menelik. A ferment of anti-European feeling drove 
the natives who had shown themselves notoriously 
Anglophile to the coast to seek protection. 

When the report of Sir William Manning was 
published in London, the Somaliland controversy 
seized the public mind. Sir William said that the 
friendly tribes were being armed to repel raids: for, 
although the Mullah was certainly not organizing 
his forces to invade the protectorate, there would 

III 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

undoubtedly be raids against unarmed friendlies. 
Lord Curzon complained in the House of Lords that 
the friendly tribes, because of loyalty to Great 
Britain, were now left to the mercy of their enemies, 
that the difficulties of Italy's problem were increased, 
and that British prestige had been greatly injured. 
The Earl of Crewe and other members of the Upper 
House contended that the only safe, honorable, and 
far-seeing policy was to send out immediately a large 
expeditionary force. Lord Lansdowne gave a re- 
sume of the reasons of Imperial interest that had 
prompted the occupation of Somaliland opposite 
Aden. He showed how Great Britain had necessa- 
rily been led from the coast to the interior, and as- 
serted that the appearance of the Mullah imposed 
obligations upon the British towards those who had 
submitted to the protectorate. Members of the 
House of Commons also denounced the evacuation as 
ill-timed and premature. 

' The debates in Parliament and the press revealed 
that the underlying motive of British colonial policy 
was to put nothing into a country that could not be 
got out of it with interest. Colonial policy has a 
financial basis. Colonies are a national investment. 
The British tax-payer sanctions no expenditure where 
future profit is not reasonably in sight. There were 
only two justifiable reasons for a Somaliland expedi- 
tion. The first was the probability of an economic 
development that would bring back the money it 
was to cost. The second was the defense of the 
larger general interests of the Empire. Somaliland 
did not seem likely to pay its way, or to help British 

112 



BRITISH POLICY IN SOMALILAND 

trade. The Government was not of the opinion that 
the Mullah could make trouble in Africa for other 
British possessions, or hurt British prestige in Arabia 
and the Persian Gulf. The friendly tribes would be 
provided with arms. Then they could defend them- 
selves — just as they would have to do anyway, if 
there were no British protectorate. 

The financial argument of 1905 was still potent in 
1910, and was reinforced by the report of 191 1, which 
showed that expenses had amounted to three times 
the revenue, although the administered area was now 
limited to the Berbera, Zeila, and Burhar districts 
along the coast . In 1 9 1 1 the ' ' political department ' * 
was abolished, and some troops disbanded. 

After two years of an anomalous regime, the crush- 
ing defeat of a British camel corps, which was saved 
from annihilation only through the attackers' shortage 
of ammunition, showed how intolerable, from the 
point of view of prestige, was the protectorate that 
did not protect merely because it was a protectorate 
that did not pay. In spite of protests and a wide- 
spread agitation, the Cabinet refused to give up the 
policy of "watchful waiting." Indian reinforce- 
ments once more arrived from Aden. But no puni- 
tive expedition followed. 

Before many months it was realized that the defeat 
at Dulmadoba was having serious consequences in 
Somaliland, and that loss of prestige was jeopardizing 
British interests. A state of war and anarchy pre- 
vailed. There was fear that the Mullah, who had 
again been raiding the friendly tribes of the interior, 
might attack Berbera. The House of Commons 

8 113 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

was asked in February, 1914, for £25,000 "to meet 
additional expenses entailed upon Somaliland in 
connection with the activity of the Mullah. The 
camel corps was twice increased. Mr. Harcourt 
explained to the House of Commons that Burao, 
eighty miles inland, and an intermediate post were 
to be re-occupied. But the Government did not 
intend to attempt to pacify the interior, or to send a 
punitive expedition against the Mullah. The Mullah 
was old, and in an advanced stage of dropsy. He 
could no longer lead the dervishes, and, having been 
excommunicated by Mecca, was only a robber. 
None regarded him longer as a prophet. The wise 
policy was to go as far as Burao, and await the 
Mullah's death. 

But Mullahs, like Villas, are feline in their insolent 
holding on to life. The Mullah's answer was to send 
cavalry within firing distance of Berbera. More troops 
were demanded from Aden in July. A few weeks later 
there were other fish to fry. London's attention was 
centered on the German advance towards Paris. 

The dervishes were still on the offensive in Novem- 
ber, 1 9 14. Cannon and naval aeroplanes were used 
to put them to flight. It was their first experience 
with shell fire. But the encounter must have taken 
place pretty near the coast. 

In spite of greater pre-occupations, there was 
constant anxiety about Somaliland until the revolt 
of the Sherif of Mecca against the Turks in the sum- 
mer of 1 91 6 sounded the last stroke of the death- 
knell that had long been tolling to the German hopes 
of Mohammedan help against their enemies. 

114 



CHAPTER VI 
THE COLONIAL VENTURES OF ITALY 

PORTUGAL, Spain, England, and France had an 
excellent start — a start of centuries — in Africa. 
Because her energies were expended exclu- 
sively upon the New World, Spain never got very far. ^ 
Portugal still holds two large colonies in Africa as the 
inheritance of days of glory and enterprise. Great 
Britain entered Africa by conquest and exploration. 
From the beginning of her colonization there was the 
strong motive that Africa was on the way to India 
and Australasia. To France, Africa was neighboring 
territory, just across the Mediterranean from her 
own coast. Russia had vast adjacent territories in 
Asia, and did not need to be interested in Africa. 
The three States that formed the Triple Alliance 
before the present war achieved their unity after the 

^ Although the colonies of Spain in Africa represent to-day all that 
is left of her vast colonial empire, they are not of enough interest to 
warrant special mention. For the Canary Islands are considered and 
treated as a part of Spain, just as the Madeira Islands are part of 
Portugal. There remain the Rio d'Oro, which is the Atlantic end of 
the Sahara desert; and two bits of mainland, very small, and five 
islands, of which Fernando Po is the only important one, in the Gulf 
of Guinea. France has the right of preemption, if Spain wants to 
sell any of these colonies. The fortunes of Spain in the Rif are 
treated in the chapter on Morocco. 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

best of Africa had been preempted: and the choice 
bits outside of European sovereignty or protection 
were being gathered in by the two Occidental Powers 
while the three Central Powers were finding them- 
selves in the new status resulting from the events of 
the decade 1 860-1 870. 

Austria-Hungary, her hands always full at home, 
has not aspired to colonies. United Germany was 
slow to awake to the political and economic advan- 
tages of a colonial Empire. But Italy, long before 
her unity was established, was inspired by the hope 
of a partial reincarnation of imperial Rome and 
medieval Venice. One finds the Risorgimento 
literature permeated with the idea that the new 
Italy must become mistress of the Mediterranean, 
with sovereignty over the north coast of Africa, and 
predominant influence in the territories freed by 
the gradual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. ^ 

Italians had never given up intimate connection 
with the African and Ottoman Mediterranean coast 
line. Curiously enough, nearest home, they had 
been largely supplanted in Dalmatia by the Slavs 
and in the Ionian Islands by the Greeks. But they 
still remained in ^gean and Levant ports. Al- 
though the nineteenth century saw a marked cultural 
conquest by France of the Near East, Italian has 
survived as a language of communication with the 
foreigner in all the Levant ports. Italians settled 
in great numbers in Egypt, Tunis, and Algeria. 
Everywhere they competed with Greeks for small 
commerce and the carrying trade. 

' See my New Map of Europe, pp. 123, 125-6, 241. 

116 



THE COLONIAL VENTURES OF ITALY 

Unfortunately for Italian hopes, France and Great 
Britain had no idea of allowing the new State to 
become a menace to their hegemony in the Mediter- 
ranean. Historic claims and economic considera- 
tions are worth nothing, unless there is the force of 
arms to make them good. In the early eighties Eng- 
land installed herself in Egypt, and France took 
Tunis. Italy's indignant protests fell on deaf ears. 
She joined the Triple Alliance, and with Germany, 
her companion in ill luck, started to see what scraps 
she could pick up that had fallen from the Anglo- 
French table. 

The withdrawal of Egypt and Great Britain from 
the Sudan gave Italy what seemed to be the only 
possible opening for the planting of her flag in Africa. 
A stretch of the Red Sea coast between Suakim 
and the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb was occupied, 
because Great Britain did not care enough about this 
country to oppose the occupation. After the fall of 
Khartum and the abandonment of the Upper Valley 
of the Nile, the British had kept a garrison at Suakim 
as a starting point of future reconquest. The French, 
on the other hand, could prevent Italy from control- 
ing the western bank of the passage from the Red 
Sea into the Gulf of Aden by virtue of "prior claims, " 
dating back to 1862, but which were not taken ad- 
vantage of until 1884. The territory, with an unde- 
fined interior occupied by nomad Arab tribes, was 
organized in 1890 as the colony of Eritrea. Its 
chief port, Massowah, is the natural port of northern 
Abyssinia. 

Farther to the east, the Italians entered Somali- 
117 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

land, and gradually proclaimed and tried to extend 
their sovereignty over the long stretch of coast land 
from Cape Guardafui to the mouth of the Juba 
River, a distance of one thousand miles. Not much 
of the north side of the Cape, on the Gulf of Aden, 
could be occupied, because the British were installed 
at Berbera, and refused to allow the littoral of the 
gulf opposite Aden "to fall into the hands of another 
Power. " Most of this territory, which is now called 
"Somaliland Colony and Protectorates," is still 
under the actual control of several Sultans, who 
nominally acknowledge the King of Italy — so long 
as he does not bother them. The southern end, at 
first called Benadir, is the colony. The port of 
Mogadisho is the capital. 

A glance at the map will show that these two 
Italian possessions touch Abyssinia on the north 
and on the south-east, where the colonial adminis- 
tration is effective. It was the Italian ambition to 
extend their influence over Abyssinia. In this way, 
they would have had two possessions of great value, 
and railways to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean 
would have carried to and from the outside world the 
trade of a rich and well-populated country. But 
they tried to accomplish this by a shabby trick, the 
disastrous results of which are narrated in the chapter 
on Abyssinia. 

The battle of Adowa in 1896 was a crushing blow 
to Italian colonial aspiration in East Africa. Abys- 
sinia remained independent, established friendly re- 
lations with France and Great Britain, and by the 
wonderful development of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 

118 



THE COLONIAL VENTURES OF ITALY 

and the creation of the French port of Djibouti, with 
its railway into Abyssinia, the two Italian possessions 
have not developed as was expected before Adowa. 

Two advantageous frontier rectifications since the 
Treaty of Adis Abeba have given Eritrea a portion 
of the high Abyssinian plateau, without which the 
colony would have had no economic excuse for exist- 
ence. As it is, the revenue is far below expenditures 
for civil administration. Italy has to make good a 
substantial deficit, and pay the charges of a consider- 
able military force besides. Seventy-five miles of 
railway had been completed when the Tripolitan 
War broke out, and this was found to be very helpful 
in keeping the colony quiet. Eritrea, being opposite 
Arabia, was the nearest point of contact of Italy and 
Turkey. Her ports in the Red Sea enabled Italy 
to prevent much communication and gun-running 
between the Senussi of the Tripolitan hinterland and 
Arabia. The transit trade of Massowah has become 
more important of recent years, though not at all 
what it ought to be, if we compare the volume of 
trade with that of other African ports whose hinter- 
land is much less advantageous. Were it not for 
pearl-fishing, palm nuts, and a little gold-mining near 
Asmara, Eritrea would cost Italy more than the 
voters of the colonial budget are probably willing to 
pay. During the first year of the present war, the 
Massowah hide exports (some coming from the 
British Sudan !) were a very precious help to Germany, 
who got them safely through the Mediterranean 
under the Italian flag. 

Owing to the intractability of the native Sultans 
119 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

and the successes of the Mullah Mohammed in 
defying the British in the neighboring colony, the 
Somaliland Protectorate has never meant much more 
than trouble and a valuable ground for wireless 
telegraphy experiments. But the Benadir Colony in 
the south has been organized and developed on sound 
lines since 1908, and Italy is beginning to sell on a 
large scale her cotton goods and other manufactured 
products to the natives, and get commission and 
transport profit out of a growing export cattle trade. 

After the bitter disappointment on the confines of 
Abyssinia, Italy began to concentrate her energies 
upon Tripoli, the last Ottoman possession in Africa. 
A policy of "pacific penetration" was begun, and 
might eventually have been successful, had it not 
been for the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, the 
starting point of a new era in the history of the 
eastern Mediterranean. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century Abdul 
Hamid, engrossed in his pan-Islamic policy, looked 
upon Tripo^ as the joyer of the renaissance of Turk- 
ish influence in Africa. The religious propaganda of 
Islam had been making rapid strides in Africa, and 
the Sultan planned to use his position as Khalif to 
counteract the political arrangements of the Euro- 
pean Powers for the final partition of Africa. He 
did not hope for much aid from Egypt. But in the 
hinterland of Tripoli, the Senussi sect could be used 
to resist, under his aegis, the spread of infidel rule 
in the Sudan and the Sahara. 

France and Great Britain, after the Fashoda in- 
cident, had divided the interior of North Africa into 

120 



THE COLONIAL VENTURES OF ITALY 

spheres of influence, and France had arrived at an 
understanding with Italy, by which Italian ambitions 
in Tripoli and French ambitions in Morocco were 
reciprocally sanctioned. Acting upon his perfect 
right, for he had not been consulted, the Sultan of 
Turkey objected to the Anglo-French Sudanic agree- 
ment, and refused to recognize it. When he lost 
what he believed would be a valuable and active 
local support by the death of the Grand Senussi in 
1902, he showed the only possible means of effective 
protest by putting a strong Turkish garrison at Bilma 
for the protection of the Tripolitan hinterland, and 
let it be understood that the Turks would proceed 
immediately to extensive military operations for 
bringing under effective control Turkish territory 
up to Lake Chad. 

As long as France and Great Britain were mutually 
distrustful and suspicious of each other in North 
Africa, and as long as Abdul Hamid could make 
trouble for the French by his strong influence over 
the Bey of Tunis, there seemed to be some hope of 
Turkish ambitions being realized. But France and 
Great Britain compounded aU their colonial rivalries 
by the Agreement of 1904. The old Bey of Tunis 
died in 1906, and was succeeded by a ruler who had 
been brought up under European influence, and was 
wholly loyal to the French. The Sultan's only hope 
from that moment lay in superior military force. 
This he did not have. So the Sudan, and later the 
whole of Tripoli, was lost to the Ottoman Empire. 

It was not a bad thing for French ambitions that 
the Turks tried to get into the hinterland of Tripoli. 

121 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

For it enabled France, without violating her Italian 
agreement, to anticipate Italy, and to define what 
had always been a vague boundary. In June, 1906, 
the Turks sent a secret expeditionary force to occupy 
the desert oases, of which Djanet was the chief. 
France protested to the Porte, declaring that Djanet 
was outside of Tripoli, which the French claimed 
extended no farther than Ghat. The Sultan had to 
issue an irade^ recognizing that Djanet was in the 
French sphere, and countermanding the instructions 
given to the Turkish army in Tripoli to penetrate 
the Sudan. 

But after the Young Turk Revolution, many irades 
of Abdul Hamid were repudiated. When the French 
Ambassador at Constantinople tried to get a clear 
understanding about the hinterland 'of Tripoli, he 
met with a rebuff. So he warned his Government 
against the dangers to which the French in North 
Africa might be exposed. The fear was soon realized. 
In the autumn of 1909, the Turks began to show un- 
wonted activity in the Sudan. It appeared that the 
Senussi sect was taking great comfort in Turkish 
promises. The Young Turks had an easy task in 
arraying the Arab tribesmen against France. For 
the only remaining outlet to the slave trade was by 
way of Borku to Tripoli. 

I was away from Turkey during that winter, and 
was living in Paris. It was common knowledge there 
that the French were meeting with serious opposition 
in the hinterland of Tripoli, and that their losses were 
heavy. But little was allowed to be published, for 
France wanted to keep on friendly terms with Turkey, 

122 



THE COLONIAL VENTURES OF ITALY 

and preferred to think that the Sudan opposition 
was due to local causes. Ottoman troops, however, 
occupied the oasis of Kafura, a Senussi center, and 
there were reports from Constantinople of the Turk- 
ish intention to cooperate with the Senussi to estab- 
lish control over the caravan route across the eastern 
Sahara from Lake Chad. There was an enormous 
traffic of arms, the effects of which are still felt, from 
Tripoli to the desert tribesmen. Italian intervention 
could not have been looked upon by France with an 
unfriendly eye: for it drew bellicose tribesmen into 
the Turkish service in Tripoli, and left France a free 
hand. Shortly after entering upon her war of aggres- 
sion, Italy annexed the African province of Turkey. 
But her politicians had no more idea than her soldiers 
of the interior of the country, what its boundaries 
ought to be, or what they were going to be. When 
Turkey finally agreed to oppose no longer the Italian 
occupation of Tripoli and Cyrenaica, the British in 
Egypt had occupied Solium, and France was firmly 
established in the oases of the Tripolitan hinterland. 
There was no intention of allowing Italy, any more 
than Turkey, to enter the Sudan! 

In the second Ottoman Parliament, I heard Nadji 
Bey, deputy for Tripoli, pleading with the Young 
Turks to follow the only policy that would save his 
country. He said: 

"Do not have any doubt about the fact that 
Tripoli is to-day economically in the hands of the 
Italians, and that we are traversing a period of 
serious transition. Let me confine my illustration 
to public instruction. The Italians have a dozen 

123 



THE NEW MAP OP APRICA 

fine schools, and our Ministry has not known how to 
establish a single one since the constitution. There 
are four old schools, but they still lack professors, 
because there is no money to pay them. The Italian 
schools provide for the needs of thirty-two thousand 
inhabitants, whose children receive an education 
which has nothing in it of Ottoman. More than 
twenty thousand Jews are to-day won over to Italy. 
We have a population of a million and a half Mos- 
lems, deprived of educational facilities. Instead of 
establishing schools, you are occupied with forming 
school districts on paper. Comrades, the Turkish 
language is lost for our subjects in Tripoli. If you 
were to compare our schools with those of the 
Italians, you would weep. To-day " 

Here Nadji Bey was interrupted by a loud clam- 
our, and his speech remained unfinished. It had 
no effect. Nothing was done. As we have seen, 
the Young Turks were devoting their energies and 
money to stirring up trouble in the Sudan, thus 
playing into Italy's hands. Por France and Great 
Britain would now welcome the realization of Italy's 
ambition. 

On September 27, 1911, Italy presented to the 
Sublime Porte an ultimatum, demanding consent in 
forty-eight hours to an Italian Protectorate over 
Tripoli. Turkey naturally ignored the ultimatum. 
Italy declared war, and sent an expedition to occupy 
Tripoli. The war lasted for a year, and was confined 
(since Italy feared getting the ill-will of the other 
Powers) to Tripoli, with the exception of a futile 
demonstration at the Dardanelles and the occupation 
of Rhodes and other islands of the Dodecanese. The 

124 



THE COLONIAL VENTURES OF ITALY 

formation of the Balkan League, in September, 1912, 
and the inevitable approach of a new war, induced 
Turkey to consent to the loss of her last African 
province. By the treaty of Ouchy, October 15, 
1 91 2, Turkey was not asked to recognize the Italian 
conquest, but merely to grant complete autonomy 
to Tripoli. The Turkish army was to be withdrawn 
from Tripoli and Bengazi, after which Italy was 
to withdraw her army from the ^Egean Islands. 
Commercial and diplomatic relations were to be 
resumed, and Italy was to take over Tripoli's share 
of the Ottoman Public Debt. ^ 

The impotence of Turkey to resist Italy's occupa- 
tion of Tripoli was due solely to the fact that Italy 
had control of the sea. It was impossible to send 
reinforcements and supplies of ammunition and arms. 
But, in spite of this handicap, Italy did not have 
brilliant success during the year of continual fight- 
ing. She was not fighting Turkey, but the natives of 
Tripoli, backed by powerful support from the Senussi 
and Arab tribes of the hinterland. Italy signed the 
Treaty of Ouchy in order to induce Turkey to use 
her influence to reconcile the Arabs to the Italian 
occupation. To accomplish this, Italy maintained 
her occupation of the islands of the Dodecanese, on 
the ground that Turkish officers were still in Tripoli, 
organizing and keeping alive what Italy now called 
the "rebellion" of the natives. 

^ The story of the "pacific penetration, " the attempt of the Young 
Turks to check it, the Italo-Turkish War, and the negotiations 
which ended in the Treaty of Ouchy (Lausanne) is told in detail in 
The New Map of Europe, pp. 241-262. 

125 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

This was perfectly true. I know many Young 
Turks who went to Tripoli, and never came home. 
They are even now by no means all dead. Their 
attitude was well expressed by one of them who went 
out to Africa after the Balkan War was ended, in 
May, 1 91 3. Like many of his friends, he was going 
to Egypt, and if he could not succeed in getting 
through there, knew how it could be done by way of 
Tunis. He said to me, when I went down to Galata 
to see him off: "I know that Turkey is dying, and 
that Islam is dying. How can I do better than die 
with my country and with my religion? And where 
can I make the sacrifice more worth while than in 
Tripoli against the Italians?" 

The Turks have affection for the French, and re- 
spect for the English. They have great faith in the 
ability of the Germans, and more or less sympathy 
with the German way of going about things, and 
getting things done. They have too much in com- 
mon with the Russians, in blood and nature, not to 
be rivals. But the Italians they regard in the same 
light as the Greeks, untrustworthy morally and weak 
physically. They may accept as a social and military 
equal the Englishman, the German, the Frenchman, 
the Austrian, the Hungarian, the Pole, and the Rus- 
sian — but never the Italian. It is necessary to make 
this statement, and to add that the Arabs adopt 
practically the same view, in order to explain how 
difficult is Italy's task in Africa. If a man re- 
spects you, you can conquer or ignore his hate. 
Italy will never make a success of African coloniza- 
tion unless she effaces the impression of Adowa, 

126 



THE COLONIAL VENTURES OF ITALY 

which her four years in Tripoli have tended only to 
confirm. 

While progress in Cyrenaica was too slow in 191 3 
to admit of organization of the new colony, for the 
tribes were uncompromisingly hostile and uncon- 
quered and the Italians had to stick to the coast, 
much was done in Tripoli to make a good impression 
at home and on the outside world. The city itself 
was transformed in a few months, and it was esti- 
mated that eleven thousand Italians, outside of the 
military forces, were already in the new colony. The 
country was being explored for mines and other 
possible ways of exploitation, and railways along 
the coast to the Tunisian frontier and inland to 
Ghadames were being surveyed. 

Shortly before the European War broke out, Italy 
reported that quiescent conditions were prevailing 
on the other side of the Mediterranean, and the re- 
vised Treasury statements showed that the acquisi- 
tion had cost up to 19 14 over two hundred and 
twenty -five million dollars. The army losses have 
never been completely compiled. If Tripoli had 
really been acquired, and if Italy were quit of the 
problem of conquest with even a huge sum of money 
and heavy loss of life, perhaps some would think the 
game worth the candle. 

The articles that have appeared in European and 
American reviews and newspapers about the value 
of Tripoli have aroused a great deal of interest, and 
resulted in much speculation. Directly opposite 
views have been set forth, and argued with plausi- 
bility. Tripoli supported a large population and was 

127 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

a source of much wealth to ancient Rome. Why not 
to-day? Is it in Tripoli, as throughout the territories 
of the Ottoman Empire, the blight of Islam? Or was 
wealth and fertility magnified and exaggerated in 
classical history? Did what seems to us of no 
account appear to the Romans and Greeks a great 
deal? But we have refutation of this in our actual 
knowledge of their wealth: and, if architecture is a 
criterion, would a little seem much to those who built 
Baalbek and Palmyra? Or is Tripoli a hopeless 
proposition because of the truth of the theory of 
climatic changes? 

Out of the confusion of opinion one does gain, 
however, a pretty good idea that Tripoli is to-day 
the least promising portion, potentially as well as 
actually, of the north African coast. Again we see 
strikingly illustrated the handicap that confronts in 
the twentieth century the Powers who achieved unity 
and ability for extra-European expansion after the 
best of Asia, Africa, and the islands had already been 
occupied. 

Considering the colonial activity in these later 
Powers, we must add to the handicap of having to 
take the leavings the fact that we are too prone to 
judge the ability and qualifications of these new- 
comers by comparison with what the "old hands" 
are able to do after generations of experience. In 
writing this very chapter the thought has occurred 
to me that I have been judging Italy by what France 
or Great Britain could have done under similar cir- 
cumstances. But let it be remembered that when 
France first entered upon her African Mediterranean 

128 










C 







^J^ ^ 






<?- 



<</ 



THE MEDITERRANEAN COAST OF AFRICA 

SHOWING CHANCES BETWEEN l^ll AND ipi4- 




I 



THE COLONIAL VENTURES OF ITALY 

conquest in Algeria, it took her fifteen years to get 
from Algiers to Constantine, and certainly half a 
century to accomplish what we have expected of 
Italy in four years. 

The repercussion of the war in Europe, which 
had no serious effect in Egypt or Timis, hit the Ital- 
ians hard, and proved that they had not conquered 
Tripoli at all. Native troubles were supposed to 
be the result of German intrigue, and the German 
Consul in Tripoli was arrested, together with other 
Germans who were under suspicion of being army 
officers conspiring with the natives. But even if this 
be true, it can be pointed out that German intrigues 
fell flat everywhere else in Africa. The unwelcome 
truth was forced upon Italy in a striking way 
when in the spring of 191 5 the news reached Rome of 
the disastrous defeat of Colonel Miani, who lost 
nearly half his European troops and some gims by a 
sudden mutiny of native troops near Sidera. After 
killing a thousand Italians, four thousand native 
troops, with all their equipment, joined the rebels. 

By the end of 191 5 the Italians were back again on 
the coast, where they had started in October, 1912. 
What the end of 191 6 will bring no man knows. But 
Italy has yet before her the task of conquering and 
colonizing Tripoli. 



129 



CHAPTER VII 

ALGERIA AND TUNIS: THE NUCLEUS OF 
THE FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

THE establishment of the French Protectorate 
over Morocco in 19 12 was the culmination of 
eighty years of effort in North Africa. The 
French African empire, with the exception of Somali- 
land and Madagascar, is made up of contiguous 
territories, extending over a quarter of the continent, 
with numerous ports on the Mediterranean and the 
Atlantic. In this empire is included the Sahara 
Desert, a large part of the Sudan, the entire valley of 
the Senegal, two thirds of the Niger, and a portion of 
the Congo valley. All the colonizing European 
states, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, Por- 
tugal, and Spain are somewhere France's neighbors. 
By her little colony in Somaliland, French territory 
touches Abyssinia in the east. Liberia is a neighbor 
in the west. In Madagascar France holds the one 
large African island. 

The French African empire started on the Mediter- 
ranean under Louis Philippe, was spread to West 
Africa under Napoleon III., and across the Sahara 
and through the Sudan to Central Africa under the 
Third Republic. Algeria was the nucleus on the 

130 



ALGERIA AND TUNIS 

Mediterranean, and Senegal on the Atlantic. It has 
been a curious combination of foresight and luck, the 
building of this empire, and, as in the case of every 
other African colony and every other Power, more 
the latter than the former. Luck deserted the 
French only twice in all the nineteenth century — • 
when they let the British get a foothold in the delta 
of the Niger, and when they failed to push their 
expedition into the headwaters of the Nile before 
Kitchener started to reconquer the Sudan. 

In studying the history of French colonial expan- 
sion, to which four chapters of this book are devoted, 
one is struck with several outstanding facts: the 
fewness of the men who dreamed dreams and thought 
the dreams could be realized ; the peculiar suitability 
of Arab and desert warfare to the military genius of 
the French ; the beginning of the solution of adminis- 
trative problems and the realization of economic 
return only in the twentieth century. As with the 
British, generations passed of hit and miss, of blunder 
and improvisation, before government and people 
were converted to the wisdom and necessity of a 
colonial policy through placing before their eyes the 
goal of financial benefit. British imperialism, as a 
national and popular program, began with the recon- 
quest of the Sudan and the Boer War. French 
imperialism, as a national and popular program, 
began with the humiliation of Fashoda. The new 
map of Africa was made during the fifteen years 
preceding the present war. 

The late Europe'anization of the Mediterranean is 
the great enigma of modern history. While remote 

131 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

regions of the globe were being transformed and 
brought under the segis of European civilization, 
the Mediterranean remained under the shadow of 
Islam, a closed sea, whose waters washed nations in 
the embryo and vast coasts where anarchy had reigned 
for fifteen centuries since the disappearance of the 
Roman Empire. France went into Algeria in 1830, 
and inaugurated the modem era of the Middle Sea, 
not because of a conviction that the time had come to 
do away with the pirates of the Barbary Coast, but 
because of a trivial dispute between the Dey of Al- 
giers and the French Consul over a question of grain ! 
It was an auspicious moment, however. The sea 
power of the Ottoman Empire had been irrevocably 
destroyed three years before at the battle of Nava- 
rino. Mohammed Ali was severing in Egypt the 
essential link of the chain that bound Africa to 
Turkey. Christian civilization was being reestab- 
lished in the Hellenic peninsula. Italy was at the 
threshold of the generation which was to bring na- 
tional unity. 

It took almost the entire reign of Louis Philippe 
to conquer Algeria. The Second Empire, although it 
made a beginning of West African conquest in Sene- 
gal, had no other policy for Africa than the intangible 
dream of reestablishing an Arab empire. Napoleon's 
energies were occupied in Turkey, Italy, Syria, and 
Mexico. France turned to Africa after the disas- 
trous war with Prussia in order to find consolation 
for the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. But there was 
no certain goal. Energies and money and men were 
dissipated in Indo-China and Madagascar. Siam 

132 



ALGERIA AND TUNIS 

received more attention than Algeria. Sentimental- 
ists clung persistently to the hope of "getting back" 
Egypt. Even the imperialists who had faith and 
conviction in the colonial future of France groped 
blindly in the dark. 

Fashoda was the awakening. This humiliation 
had to come. For the first time since 1870, France 
asked herself, ''Quo vadis?^* It aroused in the 
French nation a determination to hold and develop 
properly the heritage of whose possession the France 
of slippers and dressing-gown was scarcely aware. 
It pointed out clearly to the statesmen and empire- 
builders of France the one course that would give 
practical results. There must be complete under- 
standing and cooperation with Great Britain. Hence 
the agreement of 1899 concerning spheres of influence 
in the Sudan, and, five years later, the soHd, perma- 
nent foundation for empire-building in the agreement 
of May 8, 1904. In the meantime an agreement was 
signed with Italy providing for the future of Tripoli. 

These international arrangements assured France 
a free hand and support in Morocco, sanction of her 
occupation of Tunis, the territorial changes and 
economic stipulations necessary for the proper organ- 
ization and development of her West African and 
Equatorial African possessions. In return, Egypt 
was left to the British and Tripoli to the ItaHans. 
With aims definitely centered on definitely assured 
territories, the builders of the colonial empire were 
able to proceed to administrative organization along 
lines that would bring financial results. The money 
needed for economic development could then be 

133 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

solicited and obtained from Parliament and from 
private capital. 

But it would be a mistake to ignore what had been 
accomplished during the first three decades of the 
Third Republic. Three achievements prepared the 
way for the Aladdin's lamp transformation that has 
been wrought since 1900. One of the "keys to the 
house "^ was secured between 1881 and 1883 by the 
invasion of Tunis and the establishment of a French 
Protectorate over the territory lying between Algeria 
and the Turkish vilayet of Tripoli. Intrepid explor- 
ers and brilliant soldiers carried the French flag from 
the Senegal to the Niger, to the coast through Kong 
and Dahomey, and from Gaboon to the Congo. 
Most important of all, the conquered of Sedan be- 
came the conquerors of Northern Africa through 
learning how to fight natives with natives and by 
using native methods. 

West Africa, the Sahara, the Sudan, and Equato- 
rial Africa are treated in later chapters. It is not my 
intention to give an historical outline of Algeria and 
Tunis, but to indicate the changes and problems and 
development of the north African coast under the 
French flag, in order to show the place and impor- 
tance of what has happened recently in Algeria and 
Tunis in the building of the French colonial empire 
and in the general history of the spread of European 
civilization in Africa. For here we find the secret and 
the impetus of the movement that has established in 
fifteen years the pax Gallica from the Mediterranean 

'Jules Ferry called Tunis and Morocco the keys to France's 
house in Africa. 

134 



ALGERIA AND TUNIS 

to the Congo, from the Atlantic to the Anglo-Egyp- 
tian Sudan, over territories inhabited by twenty- 
five millions, and that has doubled in the last ten 
years the commerce of these countries, 

Algeria was completely conquered during the reign 
of Louis Philippe. For sixty years it was governed 
directly from Paris. After 1870, the French en- 
deavored to make Algeria an integral part of France. 
The idea was to colonize this country with French 
colonists, and to make of it the panacea and compen- 
sation for the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. The 
problem was exceedingly difficult, more dijSicult, in 
spite of its nearness to the mother country, than any 
other colonial enterprise ever undertaken by a 
European Power, except, perhaps, the Dutch coloni- 
zation of South Africa. In America and in Australia, 
French, Spanish, and English found vast territories 
with rich possibilities and sparsely inhabited. The 
natives were primitive and rarely settled on lands 
indispensable to their support. They were not firmly 
rooted to the soil. They were not bound together 
by social and political organisms that had developed 
with the exploitation of the land on which they Hved. 
Aboriginal inhabitants were driven into the interior, 
and gradually exterminated or assimilated. In 
Algeria, after 1870, the French attempted to implant 
a new element in a country whose lands were owned 
and Hved upon by a race that possessed political and 
social institutions. They were institutions, too, of 
a highly developed character, and the antithesis of the 
institutions brought by the colonists. The French 
were tackling a problem that European Christians 

135 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA , 

have never been able to solve, the problem of recon- 
ciling Islam and Christianity. It was altogether a 
different problem from that of colonizing a pagan 
country. It could not be compared at all to most of 
the colonizing attempts in Africa, and to the British 
in India or the Dutch in Java, where the idea is not 
to implant the ruHng race in the country ruled, but 
merely to administer the country and exploit its 
foreign commerce by means of officials and traders. 
The French tried to make Algeria a part of France, 
inhabited by Frenchmen and other Europeans and 
assimilated natives, speaking the French language 
and governed by French laws. 

Napoleon's idea of an Arab empire was abandoned. 
The natives could not be assimilated. Algeria could 
not be held indefinitely as a vast military camp. A 
European element — for the most part French — must 
be introduced, given means of acquiring land, and 
encouraged to come and stay by the granting of 
privileges not enjoyed by the natives. The first 
step was the law of 1873 concerning native property. 
It resulted in the unjust and wholly indefensible 
eviction of thousands of proprietors from their lands. 
Then followed the suppression of the Moslem system of 
administering justice through kadis, which resulted in 
the oppression of the natives and the awakening of, 
religious antagonism. The third step was the exten- 
sion to Algeria of the new French municipal law. 
This put the government of communes into the hands 
of minor officials and white colonists, who became 
legally the masters of the destinies of the natives 
among whom they lived. All sorts of advantages 

136 



ALGERIA AND TUNIS 

were granted to colonists to bring them and to keep 
them in Algeria: partial exemption from miUtary 
service, partial exemption from taxation, and a gift 
of lands of dispossessed natives. At the same time, 
the process of governing from Paris resulted in 
arrested economic development and administrative 
confusion. The Governor of Algeria had no control 
over the mihtary authorities. Administrations, de- 
pending upon ministries in Paris, were directed by 
considerations and governed by rules totally con- 
trary to the interests of Algeria and unsuited to its 
different economic and political situation aiid its pe- 
culiar problems. There was no coordination of poHcy 
and effort between branches of the Government. Fi- 
nances were managed from Paris, revenues collected by 
Paris, and credits voted in the general French budget. 
Algeria did not prosper. The natives regarded the 
French, as they had every right to do, as gendarmes 
and merchants whose one thought was to exploit 
them and to treat them unjustly. They resented 
bitterly a regime which forced intruders upon them, 
gave the intruders exemption from military service 
and taxation, and imposed upon them the burdens 
from which the intruders were free. The colonists 
felt that they had exchanged the orderly civil admin- 
istration at home for a half-baked, improvised un- 
certain regime that was neither military nor civil, and 
under which they did not know exactly where they 
stood. They did not enjoy all the rights of French 
citizens, especially in the matter of voting upon how 
the money they paid in taxes and the revenue from 
the wealth they created should be spent. 

137 



1 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Essential reforms were enacted after Fashoda, 
reforms that have brought wealth and prosperity, and 
make the days of the nineteenth century seem like an 
ugly dream. 

In 1898, three delegations, to be elected separately 
by French citizens, tax-payers other than citizens, 
and natives, were established to decide upon the 
expenditure of the tax-payers' money. This was the 
beginning of self-government. But it had no real 
importance until the law of December 24, 1900, 
separated Algerian from French finances, and estab- 
lished a distinct Algerian budget. The Algerian 
delegations, now masters of their finances, discussed 
and decided how their money should be spent. The 
result was magical. Immediately there was an ex- 
tension of public works. Natives as well as colonists 
began to take an interest in their country. Let one 
illustration suffice. Before 1900, the forests of 
Algeria brought in only several hundred thousand 
francs, which represented fines collected from natives. 
To-day there are practically no fines. But forest 
products figure in the budget for more than five mil- 
lion francs. 

Since 1900, Algeria has become, after Great Britain, 
Germany, Belgium, and the United States, the best 
client of France. Eighty per cent, of her trade, which 
amounts to nearly $250,000,000 per annum, is with 
the mother country. Railways have been extended 
so that Algeria, whose means of transportation were 
limited fifteen years ago, has now two thousand miles 
in exploitation. This has meant a rapid develop- 
ment of mineral wealth, and the possibility of using 

138 



ALGERIA AND TUNIS 

forest produce, especially cork. The great prosper- 
ity of Algeria, however, is in agriculture, where dry 
farming has brought under cultivation cereal-bearing 
areas that the natives never utilized. The most 
remarkable phenomenon in Algeria, from the stand- 
point of the colonists, is the way the soil takes to 
vines. Algerian wine has become a factor in the 
French markets, and brings to its producers financial 
returns far beyond their dreams. Algeria is also 
looked upon as a most important source of mutton 
for French markets. 

Popular education was established in Algeria in 
1892, and is more extended than anywhere else in 
Africa except in the South African Commonwealth. 
Since the inhabitants received the privilege of voting 
the budget, sums are allotted that would make 
possible primary education everjrwhere were it not 
for the unfortunate system of communal responsibil- 
ity.^ There are still a hundred thousand boys in 
populated centers who have no school facilities, and 
little has been done to educate girls. But it is the 
will of the Government to give education to all, and 

^ The commtines, under French law, collaborate in the creation 
and construction of schools, and nothing can be accompUshed without 
local cooperation. Since 1908, the Government has been giving from 
eighty to one hundred per cent, of the funds needed, but many com- 
munes in Algeria have not availed themselves of the sums appro- 
priated for their local school uses. The reform urgently needed, now 
that the Government can pay out of the general budget the entire 
expense of native schools, is to have the control taken out of the 
hands of the communes and vested in a central board at Algiers, 
which shall appropriate the money, build the schools, and manage 
them. C/. M. Augustin Bernard, in L'Afrique du Nord (Paris, 1913), 
pp. 52-3. 

139 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the funds for that purpose are provided. In the 
matter of schools the French in Algeria have felt 
much more keenly their stewardship than the British 
in Egypt. The effort they are making in all their 
colonies is rivaled only by what the United States 
is doing in the Philippines. 

But education brings its problems, especially in 
old Moslem countries where the natives believe that 
they are superior to their rulers. In their attitude 
socially toward natives, the French are found by 
subject races to be far more pleasant to live with 
than the British. Especially among the upper 
classes life is happier and richer for French than for 
British subject races. The moment a Moslem is 
educated, he becomes reasoningly a more bitter 
enemy of the Englishman than he was instinctively 
before. He hates him with all his heart and soul. 
This revelation has come to me many a time, at a 
dinner table or in a home where the Moslem, urbane 
and charming, was guest or host. His eyes tell the 
story his lips keep back. The Moslem knows that 
the Englishman denies him — and always will deny 
him — social equality, whether he be Sultan or peasant. 
The Frenchman feels no racial antipathy for the 
native and the native knows it. So the Frenchman 
has not as much to fear from Moslem education as 
the Englishman. His political interest does not 
suffer greatly by the spread of primary education. 
Higher education of native races is not a nightmare for 
him. He can conceive of the day when the native 
holds the franchise, full and free, of French citizen- 
ship. What he asks is that the native learn to speak 

140 



ALGERIA AND TUNIS 

French and become impregnated with French ideals. 
His only fear is being too greatly outnumbered in the 
midst of a native population. 

Between 1901 and 1905, the territory of Algeria was 
greatly extended into the hinterland. By the decree 
of August 14, 1905, Southern Algeria was organized. 
It includes the oases on the northern edge of the 
Sahara. The extension of the railway to the desert 
and the pacification of the Sahara enabled the civil 
authorities to take over much sooner than was antici- 
pated the administration of the Algerian hinterland. 
Not many years ago, a deputy declared in the Palais 
Bourbon that France would never hold Southern 
Algeria in any other way than by military posts, whose 
garrisons would be afraid to go out for a walk unless 
they were all together and all armed. Garrisons are 
few to-day, especially since they are needed more in 
France than in Algeria. The savages they were 
fighting fifteen years ago are now their comrades-in- 
arms before Verdun. Were Tartarin de Tarascon 
to return to-day ^^chez les tueurs'^ he could go right 
into the desert, and still not find his lions. 

Tunis was invaded in 1881. The treaty establish- 
ing the French Protectorate was signed in 1883. The 
European Powers and Turkey were confronted with a 
fait accompli. Great Britain's protests were loud 
and violent at first, but died down after the occupa- 
tion of Egypt. Italy alone felt the full force of the 
blow of seeing France so close to her shores, in a 
territory historically Italian, and whose European 
inhabitants were mostly Italian. The "perfidy" of 
France drove Italy into the Triple Alliance. Only in 

141 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

1 90 1 did the breach begin to be healed by France 
giving tacit permission to Italy to do likewise some 
day in Tripoli. The family that had been reigning, 
under the suzerainty of Turkey, since the beginning 
of the eighteenth century, was wise enough to bow 
to the inevitable, and has been maintained on the 
throne. Tunis is controled by a Resident, who is 
Minister of Foreign Affairs in the cabinet of the Bey. 
: The progress of Tunis began to be marked before 
that of any other French colony. Its railways in- 
creased far more rapidly than those of Algeria, and 
its economic prosperity began early enough to con- 
found in active public life those who opposed the 
acquisition of the Protectorate and the grants of 
money in the eighties and early nineties. A network 
of excellent railways stretches along the coast, and 
serves the interior. 'Sfax has become a marvelous 
center of olive culture. Wheat, barley, and oats are 
grown on large plantations. Lead, zinc, and iron 
are mined extensively, and the phosphates production 
is of mondial importance. 

The reasons for the more rapid development of 
Tunis than of Algeria are mostly political. Tunis 
was administered from the beginning through the 
French Foreign Office. Italians in the colony were 
plentiful, and Italy took the French occupation to 
heart. It was imperative for France to show both 
the Italians of Tunis and the whole world how much 
better off the country was under the French flag, and 
to reconcile the Tunisians themselves to their loss of 
independence. Sums were voted for railway building 
and port construction and the development of indus- 

142 



ALGERIA AND TUNIS 

tries, steamship communications were established 
and freight rates arranged, that would never have 
been put through on so large a scale on the ground of 
purely financial return. Budget estimates for Tunis 
were railroaded through the Chamber of Deputies 
year after year on the plea of the urgent necessities 
and considerations of foreign policy and national 
defense. 

Fortunately, French energy and push and skill, 
and a masterly way of handling the native ruler and 
Moslem religious leaders, have enabled French 
officials to make excellent budget returns,' and to 
report each year a remarkable agricultural and com- 
mercial development. Lands that Islam had ren- 
dered sterile were returned to the old prosperity of 
Roman days, not slowly and laboriously, but rapidly 
and as if by magic. The economic reward France 
gets from Tunis has nothing of luck in it. It is 
richly deserved. 

At the same time the political advantages of hold- 
ing Tunis are incalculable. The other "key to the 
house," Morocco, being off in the farthest comer of 
the African continent, with Algeria and the desert 
between it and the rest of Islam, never meant — even 
potentially — more than local disturbances for France. 
Tunis, independent or under the control of another 
Power, would have destroyed the possibility of a 
strong and easily defended French African empire. 
The importance of its possession by France was de- 
monstrated when the Pan-Islamic propaganda began 
to be agitated by Abdul Hamid, and taken up by 
Germany. Without Tunis, France could not have 

143 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

pacified the Sahara and installed herself in the Sudan. ^ 
Tunis, also, has offset for France the advantage 
gained after the Napoleonic wars by Great Britain 
in the possession of the island of Malta. To wrest 
in the future from Great Britain the naval supremacy 
of the Mediterranean, France needs only the ships. 
She has in Bizerta the base looking westward, and 
the Tunisian coast line lends itself easily to another 
base looking eastward. 

If the French are to realize their dreams of making 
Algeria and Morocco and Tunis true pays de France, 
the very crux of their problem is building up French 
communities all along the Barbary coast from Sfax 
to Agadir. Ten million Moslem natives can never 
be French-speaking and French-thinking unless they 
are in constant daily contact with Frenchmen — not 
officials and soldiers, but colonists whose fortunes 
are as much bound up in the country as theirs. Any 
other method of making these Mediterranean coun- 
tries French is bound to meet with dismal failure. 
Colonization cannot stand where it is. The native 
problem, the economic problem, the pacifying prob- 
lem all depend upon one and the same thing — sl 
great and widespread increase of the European ele- 
ment. The peculiar nationalistic ideal of the French 
owners demands that the new colonists be in over- 
whelming proportion French families. 

According to the last census, Algeria has five and a 
half million inhabitants, and Tunis nearly two million. 
In Algeria there are seven hundred and fifty thousand 
Europeans, of whom three hundred thousand are 

' See above, pp. 121. 

144 



ALGERIA AND TUNIS 

French. Tunis contains two hundred thousand Euro- 
peans, of whom less than fifty thousand are French. 
With all the increase of wealth of these two posses- 
sions, the French element has not greatly increased 
since 1 900 . French capital and French enterprise have 
doubled, but the Europeans employed in minor un- 
official positions are generally Italians or Spaniards. 
They become often French citizens — but that does 
not make them French, It is in vain that the French 
flag flies over Tunis. Its European civilian element 
is distinctively Italian. Every Frenchman who visits 
Tunis sees this with a sinking of the heart. ^ In 
Morocco, France is dependent on Spaniards. During 
the past twenty-five years the native population of 
Algeria and Tunis has increased thirty per cent.'i In 
the same period the demographic chart of France 
has been very nearly stationary. It is no reflection 
on the work of the best soldiers in the world and 
brilliant administrators, models of patriotism and 
self sacrifice, to say that their work has not brought — 
from the standpoint of permanency and hope for the 
future — what it should have brought. The fault lies 
with their fellow-countrymen. The work of those 
who go out with the sword and the pen into Africa 
cannot be worth what it should be to France as long 

'The 191 1 figures for Tunis (official French census) give 46,044 
French, exclusive of the Army of Occupation but inclusive of civilian 
officials; 109,143 Italians; and 12,410 "Anglo-Maltese." The last 
category is, of course, also Italian. This means that nearly 125,000 
Italians are settled in Tunis. In Algeria there are nearly the same 
number of Spaniards. Figures have not yet been published for the 
French Protectorate of Morocco. The French, however, are in a 
minority to other Europeans all along the Barbary coast. 
10 145 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

as the French nation refuses to rear children to take 
possession of the heritage. 

The warning to France, especially at this moment 
when the best of her young manhood is being sacri- 
ficed on the battlefield, is one of poignant force. 
Military victories and the great colonial empire 
mean nothing unless there is a new generation to 
benefit by the sacrifices, the glory, and the success of 
those who are giving their blood. If after the fathers 
come not the children, nothing comes. 



146 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

STANLEY'S Congo River trip resulted in the 
establishment, in 1882, of the Congo Free 
State, which was placed under the sovereignty 
of its founder, Leopold IL, King of the Belgians. Its 
neutraHty and independence were guaranteed by the 
Berlin Act of 1885, and during the next decade, as 
knowledge of Central Africa became more precise, 
its boundaries were defined by treaties with Great 
Britain, Germany, Portugal, and France, who hold 
the neighboring territories. With the exception of 
the small British Protectorate of Uganda, and a spur 
of German East Africa, which stands between the 
Belgian Congo and Lake Victoria, this vast colony 
of over nine hundred thousand square miles may be 
said to cover the heart of Africa. For over two 
thousand miles it is the territory comprising the 
Congo River and its tributaries, and might have 
continued to include both banks of the Congo, had 
not the French explorer de Brazza anticipated Stan- 
ley by planting the French flag on the north bank 
of the river opposite Leopoldville. Like the Niger, 
although on a far larger scale, the Congo finds its 
way to the sea in a most unusual course, due north 

147 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

for half its length through the very center of Africa, 
then west for five hundred miles, and then almost 
south for the last thousand. In the central bend, for 
a stretch of considerably over a thousand miles, the 
Congo is navigable. Steamers can run also on its 
principal tributaries. This has facilitated the pro- 
blem of communication, and as in the Niger, Nile, 
and Zambesi valleys, has made less expensive and 
more rapid the work of developing and colonizing. 

The larger portion of the boundary with German 
East Africa is formed by Lake Tanganika, and the 
completion of the German railway from the lake to 
Dar-es-Salaam has given the eastern portion of the 
Congo an excellent outlet to the Indian Ocean. 
Southward there is railway communication through 
Rhodesia to Beira on the Indian Ocean coast of 
Portuguese East Africa and through the Common- 
wealth of South Africa to Cape Town and Durban. 
The southern region of the Belgian Congo will soon 
be connected with the Atlantic Ocean, also by the 
railway from Katanga to Benguela in Portuguese 
West Africa. 

Since the readjustment of territory between France 
and Germany after the Agadir crisis of 191 1, German 
Kamerun touches the northwestern boundary of the 
Congo at two points. Belgian Congo shares with 
British Uganda, Lake Edward and Lake Albert, and 
touches the Nile at the northern end of Lake Albert. 
Until the death of King Leopold, the Belgians held 
also the Lado Enclave which had the west bank of 
the Nile for some distance north of Lake Albert. 
On the Atlantic coast, the Congo is hemmed in north 

148 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

and south by Portuguese territory, but has a free 
outlet to the Atlantic at the Port of Boma near the 
mouth of the Congo River. 

Belgian Congo is inhabited by about fifteen mil- 
lion natives of numerous tribes and dialects, the 
great bulk of whom are pagan. Mohammedanism 
and Christianity have made little progress in Belgian 
territory. 

The history of the Congo during the first ten 
years of the twentieth century is one of the saddest 
and most revolting pages of modern history. Were it 
not for the fact that it has so essential a part in the 
study of European colonial problems in Africa, one 
would gladly pass it over in silence. For at the 
present moment the wrongs and sufferings of Belgium 
have awakened the indignation and sympathy of the 
whole world. Neutral nations may be divided in 
their attitude toward many things the Allies are 
fighting for and hope to win. But they are united 
in their desire to see the Belgians restored to inde- 
pendence, and compensated for what they have 
endured and are enduring. But one who under- 
takes to set forth a historical record, especially when 
it is his object to establish facts and principles that 
must serve as a guide for the solution of problems 
which the near future is going to bring into the lime- 
light, cannot allow himself to be swayed by senti- 
mental or partisan considerations. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the 
convention of 1890 between Belgium and the Congo 
Free State was about to expire. The question of 
annexation was raised in Belgium, and in the rest of 

149 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the world that of the Belgian's fitness to he the stewards of 
so large and important a part of the African continent. 
There had long been a suspicion that Livingstone's 
dream of Central Africa for Christ had been super- 
seded by the actuality of Central Africa for rubber, 
and that European penetration of the Dark Con- 
tinent, far from bringing civilization and happiness 
to the natives, had brought them barbarism and 
misery. In 1901, while the press of Brussels was 
discussing the conflict between King Leopold and 
Belgian politicians over annexation, the London press 
was full of statements of English travelers about 
scandalous management, tribal troubles, and coer- 
cion of natives by traders and Congo officials. In 
1902, Morel's book, The Affairs of West Africa, 
brought the agitation in England to such a point 
that the British Foreign Office sounded the signato- 
ries of the Berlin Act as to the advisability of a com- 
mon move to put an end to the maladministration of 
the Congo Free State. Failing to secure agreement 
among the Powers, the British Government in 1903 
decided to act independently, and made strong 
diplomatic representations at Brussels. Belgium 
was told that this action was prompted not by tales 
of travelers and missionaries, but by reports from 
British consuls, one corroborating the other, in such 
a fashion that the evidence could not be controverted. 
The Belgian public took this move in very bad 
part. There was a strong feeling throughout Bel- 
gium that England's motive was the desire to appro- 
priate the fruit of the work which had converted the 
Congo into a rich domain. Discoveries of gold 

150 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

had just been reported from the Congo basin. The 
analogy emphasized by the Belgians between this 
coincidence and the British treatment of the Trans- 
vaal Boers makes very curious reading now, and goes 
to show how Belgium, just as Russia and France, 
have awakened only recently — when it was their in- 
terest to do so — to the fact that the British are cham- 
pions of liberty and right and the freedom of small 
nationalities. In fact, one can find less than ten 
years ago editors of serious Belgian newspapers 
declaring that Germany par excellence of all the 
Powers was free from suspicion of interestedness in 
her dealings with small nations! All the Belgian 
parties, with the exception of the Socialists, concurred 
in supporting King Leopold's management of the 
Congo Free State. In the face of indubitable testi- 
mony of horrible cruelties and barbarity of Belgian 
officials, the Chamber voted by ninety-one to thirty- 
five the following motion: "The Chamber, confiding, 
in agreement with the Government, in the normal 
and progressive development of the Congo Free 
State, under the segis of the King, passes to the order 
of the day." 

In February, 1904, the British Foreign Office pub- 
lished the report of the investigation made at its 
command by Mr. Casement, consul at Boma. Mr. 
Casement said that the Congo Free State had failed 
to govern according to the provisions of the Berlin 
Act, that the officials were deficient in their control 
of subordinates, that the suffering of the natives, 
through the unchecked commercial greed of the 
Europeans, was terrible beyond words. Mr. Case- 

151 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

ment had the advantage of being able to make a 
comparison of present with former conditions from 
previous personal knowledge of the country. In one 
district where he had seen five thousand people in 
1887, there were less than six hundred in 1903. 
Towns and villages on Lake Mantumba had dimin- 
ished sixty to seventy per cent, in ten years. In six 
months on the Momboya River the lowest estimate 
of people killed or mutilated by having their 
right hand cut off was six thousand, and this did not 
include the children, whom the soldiers were in- 
structed to kill with the butt of their rifles so as 
not to waste cartridges. 

One loses all patience with the blind partisans who 
declare to-day that subsequent events have proved 
the falsity of this report, simply because Mr. Case- 
ment, afterwards Sir Roger Casement, conspired 
against the British in Ireland, and was hanged as a 
traitor. None who ever came in contact with Sir 
Roger Casement — whether they agreed with him on 
the Irish question or not — can possibly impugn the 
sincerity of his motives, or regard him in any other 
light than as a patriot of unimpeachable character. 
Like Battista and Sauro, whom the Austrians re- 
cently executed and whom the Italians are mourning, 
Sir Roger was a victim of the inevitable forces that 
have been awakened during the present transforma- 
tion of the world. But even if one throws out the 
Casement report, what is he to do with the memo- 
randum of Lord Cromer, published by the British 
Government at the same time? When Lord Cromer 
visited the Upper Nile early in 1903, he saw the horror 

152 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

of Belgian rule with his own eyes. He declared that 
the population of the Belgian bank of the Nile was 
practically extinct, that the Belgians were hated and 
feared so that no Belgian officer could move outside 
of the settlements without a strong guard, that the 
natives fled from the Belgian officials, that the Bel- 
gian soldiers were allowed full Uberty to plunder and 
rarely made payment for supplies. To quote exactly 
the opinion of Lord Cromer, I give the conclusion of 
his observations in his own words: "It appears to me 
that the facts which I have stated afford sufficient 
evidence of the spirit which animates the Belgian 
administration, if indeed it can be called adminis- 
tration. The Government, as far as I could judge, is 
conducted almost exclusively on commercial prin- 
ciples, and even judged by that standard, it would 
appear that those principles are somewhat short- 
sighted." 

In the debate in the House of Commons on the 
Casement and Cromer reports, many members in- 
sisted that England was bound, by her signature 
attached to the Berlin Act, to intervene, and one 
member (Lord Edmond Fitzmorris) believed that 
the Belgian reply to the British representations justi- 
fied naval action against Boma. But what Govern- 
ment in the history of the world has ever intervened 
by force to honor its signature to a treaty except 
when its own interests were vitally at stake? ^ Sir 

^ One searches history in vain for a single precedent of the action 
that political opponents of President Wilson declared he was bound 
by The Hague Convention to take when Germany violated Belgian 
neutrality. I wrote at the time, and have since written and still 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Edward Grey, who was then of the Opposition, sup- 
ported the policy of the Government on the floor of 
the House of Commons, and agreed that Great Brit- 
ain could act only in common with all the Powers. 
He said that the Berlin Act ought to be revised. 

Indignation in Belgium over the Casement and 
Cromer reports and the House of Commons debate 
was even greater than in the previous year. The 
Belgian public persisted in believing that the British 
were not at all moved by " the fair fame of European 
civilization at stake, " as Lord Percy had said. They 
scouted the cruelty charges. They denied in toto 
Lord Cromer's observations, and believed that Eng- 
land wanted to grab the Congo as she had grabbed 
the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. 

Another book written by Mr. Morel, called King 
Leopold's Rule in Africa, proved from comparing 
the value of exports and imports that there was no 
fair trade between natives and their task-masters. 
From 1898 to 1902 considerably over thirty-five 
million dollars of exports, chiefly rubber, were offset 
by only seventeen million dollars of imports. The 
figures of 1903 showed a worse exploitation: exports 
nearly eleven million dollars and imports less than 
four million three hundred thousand dollars. As 
much was being imported for construction and devel- 



believe, that it would have been a great and wise move, for the sake 
of humanity, if Mr. Wilson had protested. But that he was bound 
to protest is nonsense. The statement that he brought dishonor 
and shame upon the United States by not protesting, when not made 
by an ignorant man or a man unaccustomed to think, is hysteria 
pure and simple. 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

opment purposes and for the use of Europeans, what 
did the natives, who were paid in goods, receive in 
exchange for the rubber they brought in? The 
cynical and heartless exploitation of the natives could 
be possible only through the connivance of the Bel- 
gian officials. It was a more serious question than 
that of a weak and incapable administration. The 
provisions of the international agreement by which 
King Leopold had been entrusted with the Congo 
Free State were ignored. There was not even the 
pretense of living up to them. 

Public opinion throughout the worid was now so 
thoroughly aroused that a Commission of Inquiry, 
with unlimited powers, was appointed, composed of 
a high Belgian Magistrate, the President of the Court 
of Appeal in Boma, and a Swiss. Its report, issued 
in November, 1905, after the Government had 
braced up the administration as a result of the recent 
disclosures, emphasized the suppression of slave 
trade, cannibalism, and human sacrifices, the exten- 
sive establishment of railways, steamers, and tele- 
graph, and the wonderful development of LeopoldviUe 
as a trading center, and remarked that the Congo 
villages "recalled seaside towns in Europe, with their 
schools and hospitals." On the other hand, there 
were abuses, certain "unfortunate populations" 
being subjected to forcible porterage of enormous 
burdens. They were "menaced with partial de- 
struction." There was oppression in the collection 
of rubber, although it had been much reduced in 
the King's private domain. Female hostages were 
imprisoned when villages did not bring in the stipu- 

155 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

lated amount of rubber; defaulters were lashed; 
black sentinels were placed over rubber gatherers; 
and military attacks — by Government troops — on 
defaulting villages were reported officially as if they 
were expeditions into an enemy's country. Some 
companies, which held extensive concessions, were 
openly denounced. By "defaulter" is meant a 
native who does not bring in the amount of rubber 
arbitrarily allotted to him. 

The sum and substance of the report of the Com- 
mission is identical with that of Casement and other 
British consuls and of travelers and missionaries, to 
wit: The Congo Free State allowed the natives of 
Central Africa, in defiance of the obligations under- 
taken at the time of the constitution of the country, 
to be held in slavery worse than anything they had 
ever known. Not only did the Government counte- 
nance the compulsion and oppression practiced by the 
companies who held concessions and in the King's 
private domain, but they aided in putting down 
"rebellions" when the natives arose in desperation 
against their white task-masters ; or refused, without 
violence, to work as hard as they were asked to; or 
even were unable, through lack of rubber, to find 
the amount imposed upon them. The natives were 
allowed to be tortured and maimed and slaughtered 
wholesale. 

King Leopold, upon the publication of the report, 
said that from the beginning his motive in Africa 
had been philanthropic rather than commercial, that 
he was glad "abuses" had been exposed, and that 
he intended to appoint a new commission to devise 

156 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

practical measures for carrying out the recommenda- 
tions of the Commission of Inquiry for reforming the 
administration and ameliorating the lot of the natives 
whose interest he had always had at heart. There 
was little faith in King Leopold's sincerity, and in the 
desire of the Belgian Government and the will of the 
Belgian people to put an end to the scandal. When 
concessions were granted to American syndicates, it 
was interpreted as an effort on the part of the King 
to anticipate interference from the United States 
Government. 

On December 4, 1907, the Belgian Government 
presented to the Chamber a treaty between King 
Leopold and Belgium, ceding the Congo Free State 
to Belgium. After some modifications the treaty 
was accepted by the Chamber and the Senate in the 
summer of 1908. Belgium took over the Congo, 
agreeing to pay allowances to Princess Clementine 
and Prince Albert and ten million dollars to the King 
in fifteen annual payments,^ but refused to be re- 
sponsible for the Congo Free State debt of nearly 
twenty-three million dollars. At the same time, 
the status of the colony was established by a 



' The sum guaranteed to King Leopold and his successors was to 
be spent "for the benefit of the Congo," and the allowances to Prin- 
cess Clementine and Prince Albert to cease on the marriage of the 
former and the accession of the latter. In the original treaty, King 
Leopold had made unacceptable reservations about the way the 
revenues of the Crown domains were to be spent. He wanted to 
establish, at the expense of the Congo, a sort of combined Rockefeller 
and Carnegie Foundation, for the promotion of scientific knowledge 
and the good of the inhabitants of Belgium and the Congo, which 
would have been a serious drain on the resources of the new colony. 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

special law, and provision made for its government. 
Europe was faced with a fait accompli. But did not 
the signatory powers have to recognize the validity 
of this transfer? In 1885 they had constituted a 
free and independent state, and guaranteed its perpetual 
neutrality. 

The British Government published a parliamen- 
tary paper on November 1st, by which Sir Edward 
Grey is shown to have stated the unwillingness of 
Great Britain to recognize the annexation until 
assurances were given concerning the future. She 
had neighboring territories, which could be affected 
by a continuance of weak and unjust government in 
the Congo. The government of the Congo Free State 
had been notoriously different from that of all contiguous 
colonies for many years. Belgium was pressed for 
definite assurances with regard to native rights and 
commercial privileges of other nations in the Congo. 
On December 23d, the London newspapers con- 
tained a memorandum, signed by the most prom- 
inent men in England, expressing approval of Sir 
Edward Grey's stand and declaring that Great 
Britain must insist that Belgium give a definite 
guarantee for the assurance of native rights in land 
and in collection of forest produce. 

In sharp contrast to the British attitude, Germany 
recognized immediately the transfer. Foreign Secre- 
tary von Schoen told the Reichstag on January 23, 
1909, that Germany had been the first of all the 
Powers to recognize the transfer of the Congo to 
Belgium, and that though her acquiescence to the 
annexation did not imply approval of existing con- 

158 



1 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

ditions, Germany assumed, and was convinced, that 
under Belgian rule a cleansing process would ensue. 
Herr von Schoen stated explicitly that Germany had 
not considered herself entitled by treaty to interfere, 
as Great Britain had asked her to join in doing, to 
secure the introduction of Congo reforms. He gave 
an outline of the two treaties (that with the inter- 
national Congo Association and the Congo Articles 
in the Berlin Conference Act), and showed that the 
signatory Powers had no right to a voice in the mat- 
ter. In Belgium Germany's attitude was deeply 
appreciated. 

During 1909 the United States and Great Britain 
continued to correspond with the Belgian Govern- 
ment, maintaining in common that the annexation 
could not be recognized until definite guarantees 
were given on the subject of the exploitation of 
natives. But Belgium took her cue from Austria- 
Hungary's recent action in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
International agreements are not worth the paper 
they are written on. The transfer was celebrated 
at Antwerp by a colonial festival. King Leopold 
made a speech in which he was silent on the native 
question, but held up glowingly the commercial 
advantages to Belgium, urged the development of the 
merchant marine, and invited capitalists to take up 
concessions in the Congo. At that very moment, the 
Socialists in the Chamber exposed the fact that one 
of the first decrees of the new Colonial Minister 
was to impress twenty-six hundred natives for railway 
construction. The Colonial Minister justified forced 
labor on the ground of urgency and said that the 

159 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

natives had no reason to complain, as the railway 
would be useful to them as well as to Belgium. His 
position was endorsed by the Chamber. 

Belgian promises were still not believed in England. 
Sir Edward Grey declared that Great Britain would 
never have recognized the Congo Free State at all, 
if she had known what it was going to become, and 
that she would not now recognize it until she was 
sure that conditions would be radically reformed. 
But when it was suggested several months later that 
the British navy blockade the mouth of the Congo 
as a protest against the annexation, Sir Edward was 
frank in stating that allowing Belgium to rule the 
country was the ultimate solution. All the British 
wanted was a practical expression of willingness on 
the part of the Belgians to act decently in the Congo. 
When I say "the British," I mean not merely the 
Government but enlightened public sentiment, which 
in this matter dictated the Government's policy 
irrespective of international political consideration. 
On November 19, 1909, the demonstration at Albert 
Hall must have been a warning to Belgium that a 
solution of the Congo question was necessary, if 
good relations were to be maintained. The Albert 
Hall demonstration was presided over by the Primate, 
assisted by nine bishops, leading nonconformists, 
many peers, and about fifty members of Parliament. 
The Primate and the Bishop of Oxford expressed 
faith in the good intentions of the Belgian people, 
but denounced in most unqualified terms the admin- 
istration, the ill will, the bad faith, and the atrocities 
in the Congo, declaring that King Leopold was per- 

160 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

sonally and beyond any doubt responsible for them. 
The Bishop of London formulated the British de- 
mands: ill treatment of natives must cease, land be 
restored to them, proper soldiers and police substi- 
tuted for the rubber- collecting bullies and assassins, 
"hostage houses" done away with, the method pro- 
posed for abolishing taxes explained, decimation of 
natives stopped, and the promises made at the time 
of annexation immediately fulfilled. 

It is well to remind those who are arguing to-day 
(and there are many of them) that in continuing the 
Congo agitation after the Belgian annexation the 
British public was imposed upon and misled by 
prejudiced reports of missionaries and by the report 
of a now discredited traitor, of the testimony of 
Casement's successor at Boma. Colonel Thessiger 
reported officially to the Foreign Office at the begin- 
ning of 1909 that the whole system of Belgian taxa- 
tion was fraudulent, and that the violation of laws 
and the heart-rending atrocities of the rubber col- 
lecting were due to the wilful blindness, if not to the 
actual connivance, of the Belgian officials. During 
the same year, in October, the native chiefs sent 
a memorandum to the Belgian Colonial Minister, 
praying for relief from taxation. They could obtain 
no rubber, and received no return for the taxes ex- 
acted of them. British prospectors and traders were 
prevented from operating in the Katanga Province. 
The Belgian Socialist leader, Vandervelde, made a 
journey to the Congo to defend two American mis- 
sionaries, who had been arrested on the charge of 
libeling one of the big rubber companies. M. 
II 161 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Vandervelde secured their acquittal, and when he 
returned to Brussels, he gave testimony on the floor 
of the Chamber of the arbitrary exploitation, tortur- 
ing and killing of natives, and the use of armed sen- 
tries over rubber-collecting slaves. All the Colonial 
Minister could answer was that he hoped the charges 
were exaggerated. 

The death of Leopold 11. on December 7, 1909, 
brought some ray of hope that the people of Belgium 
would have an awakening of conscience, and attempt 
to do away with the wholesale butchery and slavery 
in Africa that brought them as a civilized and Chris- 
tian nation to shame before the whole world. Leo- 
pold's successor, the present King Albert, had visited 
the Colony during the year before his accession. 
Starting at Katanga, which he reached by way of 
Cape Town and Rhodesia, Prince Albert had walked 
fifteen hundred miles through the Congo forests. 
He was not allowed to see what was going on in the 
Congo, but he heard enough during his journey to 
make him dissatisfied with existing conditions. The 
passing of the Congo's evil genius Leopold gave 
Belgium a chance. But it is very interesting to note 
here that the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Belgium, 
who in 1914 appealed to the Vatican and the whole 
world against German cruelties in Belgium, "stood 
pat" only five years before, in the face of irrefutable 
evidence of the death and torture and maiming of 
many times the number of innocent women and 
children that the Germans had to their record in 
1 914. All parties and all circles in Belgium, with 
the exception of the Socialists, had supported 

162 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

King Leopold and defended the Congo adminis- 
tration. 

For the first three years of King Albert's reign, 
Great Britain still refused to recognize the annexa- 
tion. In 1 9 10, the Congo Reform Association and 
the Aborigines Protection Society, whose agents were 
touring extensively, convinced the Foreign Office 
that forced labor had not been abolished. In 191 1, 
consular investigation showed that conditions were 
improved in many districts, but that the Belgian 
administration was still far from satisfactory. There 
was the controversy, also, over the question of free- 
dom of trade. Sir Edward Grey doubted the desire 
of the Congo authorities to observe treaty obliga- 
tions in this matter. The revocation, however, of 
the charters of three of the largest concession com- 
panies at the beginning of 1912 showed that Belgium 
was at last awakening to the necessity of abolishing 
monopolies and throwing the Congo open to free 
trade. 

The last outstanding question between Belgium 
and the public opinion of the world was that of native 
right to land ownership. In this matter, Germany 
stood with Great Britain. Concessions to companies 
gave private individuals rights over large tracts of 
land which superseded preexisting native rights. 
This was a violation not only of elementary prin- 
ciples of justice, but also of a clearly formulated 
stipulation of the Berlin Act. By what right, other 
than that of the possession of superior brute force, is 
a man's land taken from him and the owner com- 
pelled to work for the interest of another by terms of 

163 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA i 

a unilateral agreement imposed upon him without his 
consent? In the old days, the natives of Central ,„ 
Africa suffered from occasional slave-raiding parties, 1 
Y/hich would take a few hundred at a time into cap- 
tivity. Europeans abolished slave-trading — ^in the 
name of Christ and humanity — but they substituted 
a slavery far more degrading.^ Not an occasional 
few hundred were victims, but all the people all the 
time were reduced to slavery. The companies 
answered the charge of the Aborigines Society, that 
native rights were being violated in the leased areas, 
by the statement that their concessions tended "to 
the uplifting of the native and his betterment." 
They professed the most benevolent intentions to- 
wards the people they were oppressing ! 

In June, 191 3, after ten years of constant agitation, 
the victory appeared to have been won. For Sir 
Edward Grey announced in June that consular re- 
ports from the Congo made it no longer justifiable 
or expedient to withhold recognition of the annexa- 
tion. Arrangements were being made to grant free 
land to natives for cultivation, and Belgium had 

^ I say Europeans instead of Belgians, because this evil was by no 
means confined to the Congo. Atthis very time it was-under investi- 
gation in the French, British and German West African colonies, 
especially in connection with the cocoa and palm-oil industries. 
Violation of native land rights and forced labor go hand in hand — 
inseparably — in almost every concession in what is known as Protec- 
torate areas. If you take the black man's land to develop it, you 
must use him as the laborer. If he does not want to work on your 
terms, you make him. Hence the abuses. It was on the ground of 
violation of the Berlin Act that Germany in 1913 protested against 
the extensive concession granted by Liberia to the British firm of 
Lever, the soap manufacturers. 

164 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

accomplished much in improving her administration. 
The personal knowledge and influence of King Albert, 
the pressure of the Belgian Socialist Party, and the 
increasing revelation of the richness of the Congo 
basin were the decisive factors in the work of reform. 
One searches in vain to find, outside of the Socialist 
organization, a campaign for Congo reform in Brus- 
sels and Antwerp during these ten years. The 
Belgians seemed to have no sense of responsibility 
toward the Congo, and the stories of the atrocities 
of which their officials and soldiers were guilty, sup- 
ported though they were by incontrovertible testi- 
mony, made no impression upon them. 

Fortunately, unchecked exploitation by concession 
companies and maladministration of officials is not 
the whole story of the Congo since 1900. As was 
indicated in the report of the Commission of Inquiry, 
there is another and brighter side of Belgian activity. 
In May, 1902, an agreement was signed in Brussels 
for the extension of the Cape to Cairo railway from 
the northern border of Rhodesia to Lake Kasala. It 
was the idea to have the Rhodesian line, which was to 
pass through Katanga, join in this region a line from 
Benguela, an Atlantic port in Portuguese West Africa. 
Rhodesia would then have a much shorter connection 
with the sea coast, and a northern route would be 
opened up through the Congo valley across to Lake 
Albert and up the Nile. At this time the Reichstag 
had refused to vote the credits for the extension of 
the line from Dar-es-Salaam to Lake Tanganika, and 
it was believed that the German line would not be 
built. The line from the south into Katanga Pro- 

165 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

vince of the Belgian Congo reached, in 1912, Eliza- 
bethville, only a few miles from the Rhodesian 
frontier, but over one hundred and sixty miles from 
the point in which it enters Belgian territory. It 
had been surveyed north to Bukama, and construc- 
tion work was being rapidly pushed in 1914. 

Progress has been made also in opening up the 
Congo valley south from Stanlej^ille, where the 
river makes its sharp bend, through the heart of 
Central Africa, into Katanga. In September, 1906, 
the railway from Stanleyville to Ponthierville, a 
stretch where the Congo is not navigable, was com- 
pleted. The Congo from Ponthierville to Kindu 
is navigable. From Kindu to Kongolo two hundred 
and twenty miles of railway have been built. A 
glance at the map will show that these are important 
sections in the Cape to Cairo railway. From Stan- 
leyville to Lake Albert Edward the survey was com- 
pleted in 191 1, and an agreement reached to connect 
the Katanga railway with the Portuguese frontier, 
and the Congo with Lake Tanganika. The latter 
line, because of its importance in the campaign 
against the Germans, was completed in March, 19 15. 
There are also railway lines from Matadi (near 
Boma) to Leopoldville, ^ and from Boma to Tshela. 

' "Leopoldville, on the opposite side of the Congo River from 
Brazzaville, is less pretty and picturesque ; but one feels there more 
activity, or an activity more concentrated, and much more order 
and method. The state is proprietor of almost all the land, and of 
almost all the houses, as well as of the camp on the outskirts, where 
is found grouped the entire black population. The Belgian line 
from Matadi to Kinchassa is a narrow-gauge railway over the moun- 
tains. It takes two days to go the 500 kilometers. Its construc- 

166 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

As the Congo from Leopoldville to Stanle3rv^ille is 
navigable, communication by rail and steamer is 
now practically complete all the way across the 
continent, and from the heart of Central Africa south 
for nearly two thousand three hundred miles to Cape 
Town. 

Unstinted credit is due to Belgian engineers and 
Belgian officials for vision, for energy, and for ability 
to surmount seemingly unsurmountable difficulties 
in making these railways possible. There has always 
been, on the part of the Belgian authorities, whole- 
hearted cooperation with British and Germans in 
opening up Central Africa, and the three states have 
worked together, without too much thought of sel- 
fish advantage, in furthering transportation schemes. 
In March, 19 14, the Colonial Minister, in a remark- 
able speech presenting the Congo budget, admitted 
that the completion of the German line from Dar- 
es-Salaam to Lake Tanganika was going to modify 
transport conditions by attracting traffic that would 
otherwise go west through Belgian territory all the 
way to the Atlantic. But he believed that there was 
room for all, and that the influence of German ac- 
tivity on Belgian railwayplans was much exaggerated. 
He thought, on the other hand, that Belgium would 
ultimately draw advantages from the increased means 



tion was to cost five million dollars: it has cost thirteen millions. 
Commenced under great obstacles, it has admirably succeeded. 
Travelers and freight increase each year; and the company is able 
to lessen tariffs, which are still very high." M. Felicien Challaye, 
a member of the de Brazza investigating party, writing in 1905. 
See Le Congo Frangais (Paris, 1909), pp. 21-2, 28. 

167 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

of transportation in all directions. He submitted 
new railway projects for over two thousand miles of 
interior lines. 

Aside from slight difficulties with Great "Britain over 
the Bahr-el-Ghazal and Uganda frontiers, and the 
evacuation of the Lado Enclave, Belgium has worked 
in harmony and in a friendly spirit with France, 
Great Britain, Germany, and Portugal in the estab- 
lishment of frontiers. Too much praise cannot be 
given to the members of the frontier commissions 
everywhere in Africa for the completion, without 
friction, of tasks that are little appreciated and talked 
about, though arduous and perilous. How often 
have frontier commissions had to make their own 
maps, decide on questions that may in the future be 
of tremendous importance, and at the same time be 
ever on the alert to defend themselves against hostile 
savages and keep in check jungle and swamp fevers ! 

Belgium has a rich possession in the Congo, espe- 
cially since the solving of means of transport has done 
away with dependence upon native porters and has 
made possible the development of mining. In the 
Katanga region, copper and tin and diamonds have 
been discovered. In many valleys of the Congo 
tributaries there is gold. The palm oil and palm 
nut industries are developing encouragingly. In 
view of the rapid decrease of forest produce, this 
means economic salvation for the Congo. For con- 
cession companies, knowing that they had to make 
hay while the sun was shining and as indifferent to 
the future as if they had been American lumber 
companies, deliberately killed the goose that laid the 

i68 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

golden egg. In 1912, forest produce fell off nearly 
ten per cent., and in 1913, the export of rubber de- 
creased fifty per cent. • There are left in the world few 
virgin territories. It is a pity that governments 
have followed the line of least resistance in the 
development of new territories, farming them out on 
concessions, and have not waked up to the fact that 
private corporations have no interest in the common- 
weal, until it is too late to save much of what might 
have been conserved. The days of chartered com- 
panies, with a free hand to milk dry vast regions, are 
over. Belgium in the Congo, like other European 
nations in their colonial possessions, is waking up to 
the fact that the State alone feels its responsibility 
towards unborn generations, and that only by govern- 
mental restrictions, enforced by capable govern- 
mental supervision, can individuals and corporations 
be prevented from sacrificing the future for im- 
mediate gain. The rubber industry in the Congo 
illustrates this principle perfectly. Big dividends 
to-day, for to-morrow our leases may be revoked. 
The devil take the future. 

Belgian experiences in administration and finance 
in the Congo have not been very different from those 
of Germany and Italy in their early days as coloniz- 
ing states. An official class, accustomed to deal with 
colonial problems, cannot be created in a generation. 
Pioneers make many mistakes. Socialist parties — 
every Opposition in fact — use colonial blunders and 
mismanagement, real or fancied, for attacks upon the 
Government, especially in connection with budget 
estimates. In Belgium as in Germany the Socialists 

169 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

have been the voice of conscience. We have already 
mentioned Vandervelde's courage in speaking the 
unwelcome truth after his visit to the Congo. Time 
and again he and other Socialists criticized in the 
Chamber what they considered unjust decrees of the 
Colonial Minister, and exposed abuses. But the 
Socialists, while performing this useful service, are 
obstructionists in money matters, and oppose con- 
sistently "throwing good money after bad " in colo- 
nial enterprises. They oppose also military service 
abroad. There was a howl when Belgium sent nearly 
four thousand soldiers for Congo duty in 1909, and 
the deficit revealed in the 1910 budget added to the 
complication of the British attitude. As far as 
revenue goes, things have not been improved. Just 
before the war the revelation of a deficit of nearly 
five million dollars in the 1914 estimates made diffi- 
cult getting the ear of the Chamber for railway grants. 
The customs yield of the Belgian Congo is not much 
larger than that of Sierra Leone, with one- thirtieth 
of the area and one-fifteenth of the Congo population. 
Although reforms have been sincerely effected, 
Belgium has still the same great problem of colonial 
administration that France and Portugal face in 
Africa. These states possess enormous territories, 
which are not well administered and developed as 
they might be because they have not the surplus popu- 
lation able and willing to undertake the task. Before 
the war, the Belgian Congo was run by a staff of 
Europeans of many nationalities, some of them ad- 
venturers of the worst type. Even among the high 
officials, many were not Belgian. They were in the 

170 



THE BELGIANS IN THE CONGO 

Congo only because they saw there an opportunity 
to have influence and to make money that was 
denied to them in their countries of origin. 

Belgium has given valuable assistance in the long 
two years campaign against German East Africa. 
I have understood, on good authority, that she has 
been able to train, equip, officer, and put into the 
field twenty thousand native troops. 

During the first year of the European War, there 
was much discussion about the future of the Congo, 
and it is certain that Germany intends to use her hold 
on Belgium, if she is able to maintain it until negotia- 
tions for peace begin, as a trump card in the read- 
justment of European spheres in Africa. Should she 
be successful, it would mean the realization of Ger- 
man dreams of a path from east to west across the 
continent. The Germans have not hesitated to 
insinuate that the great sums loaned to Belgium by 
the Allies, especially by Great Britain, would be 
secured by Anglo-French economic, if not political, 
control of the Congo. In order to make clear the 
intentions of the Allies, and to set at rest the minds 
of the Belgians and allay suspicions of neutrals, the 
French Minister handed to the Belgian Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs at Havre on April 29th, 191 6, the 
following declaration: 

"Referring on one hand to the agreements with 
Belgium of April 23-24, 1884, February 5, 1895, and 
December 23, 1908, and on the other hand to the 
note handed on September 19, 1914, to the Belgian 
Government by the Minister of Great Britain on the 
subject of the Congo as well as to the declaration of 

171 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the Powers guarantors of the independence and neu- 
traHty of Belgium on February 14, 191 6, the Govern- 
ment of the French Republic declares that it will lend 
its aid to the Belgian Government at the time of the 
peace negotiations with the view of maintaining the 
Belgian Congo in its present territorial status and 
of having attributed to this colony a special indem- 
nity for the losses incurred in the course of the war. " 
On the same day, the British and Russian repre- 
sentatives at Sainte Adresse stated that their Govern- 
ments adhered to this declaration, and the Italian 
and Japanese representatives that Italy and Japan 
approved the French note. 



172 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FIRST GERMAN COLONY: SOUTHWEST 
AFRICA 

GERMAN Southwest Africa occupies more than 
a quarter of the area of the continent south 
of the Zambesi River. Its coast Hne, running 
from Portuguese West Africa to the Orange River, 
which is the boundary with Cape Colony, is, with 
the exception of the Spanish Rio de Oro, the most 
barren and forbidding Httoral of all Africa. It was 
formerly known as Damaraland in the north and 
Namaqualand in the south, and was as completely 
ignored in the early days of European colonization 
as Bechuanaland and the Kalahari Desert, which 
form its interior boundary. The British neglected 
to proclaim a protectorate over territories which 
had so little promise. They awakened to what they 
had missed only when Germany anticipated them. 

In 1883, an enterprising Bremen merchant ac- 
quired from a native chief the southern portion of 
this territory from Angra Pequena to the Orange 
River and called it Liideritzland after himself. The 
following year Germany's entrance into Africa — 
and into colonial politics — was announced by Bis- 
marck's telegram to the German Consul at Cape 
Town: 

173 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

"According to a communication from Herr Liider- 
itz, the British Colonial officials doubt whether his 
acquisitions north of the Orange River can claim 
German protection. You will declare officially that 
he and his settlement are under the protection of the 
Empire." 

The German flag was rapidly extended north 
along the coast to Portuguese territory at the mouth 
of the Cunene River, which is some distance beyond 
Cape Frio. Between 1884 and 1890 the Germans 
penetrated to the desert of Kalahari. A boundary 
was established with Great Britain on the edge of the 
Bechuanaland Protectorate, and in 1890 the Germans 
made good their claim in the extreme north to a 
narrow strip which gave them access to the Zambesi 
River not far west of Victoria Falls. 

The occupation of Togoland, Kamerun, and 
German East Africa followed that of Southwest 
Africa in less than a year. 

Many English writers, and particularly the few 
who have written on the German African colonies 
since August i, 1914, have described the German 
penetration in Southwest Africa and elsewhere as 
the result of contemptible trickery and bluff. They 
try to prove that the whole history — from the diplo- 
matic and political side, and even partially from the 
economic side — of Germany in Africa is a disgraceful 
chapter of brutality and failure. The heat of conflict 
has led them to distort facts and to express hopelessly 
biased judgments. It is unfortunate, at a moment 
when the question of the future of the German 
colonies needs a dispassionate attitude, that sources 

174 



GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA 

of information in the English language should be so 
one-sided. ^ 

There is much to deplore and condemn in German 
methods of colonization in Africa. But there is no 
more to condemn in German methods than in 
French and Italian, and not as much as in Belgian. 
The results of thirty years are not encouraging, if 
one compares them with the results obtained by 
Great Britain during the same period. It must 
always be borne in mind, however, that Germany, 
Italy, and Belgium are new hands at colonizing. It is 
as unfair to compare German colonial administration 
with British colonial administration as it would be 
to compare British General Staff officers with German 
General Staff officers. As for the methods by which 
colonies are acquired, Germany has done nothing, in 
bringing territories under her flag, that has not been 
done by every other colonizing Power. The Euro- 
pean colonial game has always been one of grab 
when you can and how you can, and the last word has 
invariably been to him who was the strongest. The 



' "In something less than a year Germany had intrigued, lied, and 
tricked Britain into acknowledging her sovereignty over 1,000,000 
{sic) square miles of Africa, or an area about nine times as large as 
the whole of the United Kingdom, with a total native population of 
nearly 14,000,000." — A. F. Calvert, German African Colonies (Lon- 
don, 1916), p, xiii. of preface. Mr. Calvert claims that all the 
territories were virtually British, and that their chiefs had begged for 
the establishment of a British Protectorate. He pretends that the 
native population of the German colonies welcomed the British 
recently as deliverers, in sharp contrast to "the Boers, converted by 
British rule to be its enthusiastic supporters," who defended South 
Africa against the German invasion. 

175 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

title to possession of the territories held by European 
states outside of Europe is a title won by force. 

German development has been hampered from the 
very first days by the British possession of Walfisch 
Bay, the only natural port along the coast. The 
two important watercourses that reach the seaboard 
in German Southwest Africa empty into Walfisch 
Bay, and England is able (as the events of 1 9 14 
proved) to dominate the coast without difficulty 
from this important strategic point. The harbor 
has good anchorage, and is sheltered from the most 
frequent winds. The British have never been able 
to make anything out of Walfisch Bay for themselves. 
By continuing to hold it, they have compelled the 
Germans to spend enormous sums of money in 
creating the port of Swakopmund in a far less favor- 
able locality. It is a striking example of a dog-in-the- 
manger policy that a more liberal and wiser attitude 
towards German extra-European expansion should 
have prompted Great Britain to abandon long ago. 
Walfisch Bay is one of the pin-pricks that have 
developed in Germany the spirit which is now taking 
terrible vengeance upon the world. 

Absence of water from perennial rivers and a 
limited rainfall give Southwest Africa a soil that 
makes agriculture exceedingly difficult. In dry 
years the rivers cannot be depended upon. Irriga- 
tion is so costly that the prospect of the colony 
becoming agricultural is very slim indeed. But the 
country is covered with a grass that possesses 
unusual nourishing properties, and there is sufficient 
water for cattle in almost every district. The only 

176 



GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA 

way to utilize the land to advantage is by stock- 
raising. Dr. Rohrbach, who looked over the country 
for the German Government in order to see what the 
prospects of systematic settlement were, declared 
that about five hundred thousand out of the eight 
hundred thousand square kilometers could be used 
as grazing land. This means five thousand good 
farms. On April i, 191 3, there were over twelve 
hundred farms in private hands. 

The Government has done much to encourage 
stock-raising by importing bulls and cows, by paying 
the cost of transporting Australian sheep, and by 
organizing a splendid veterinary service. During 
the years immediately before the war there was a re- 
markable increase in cattle and horses and ostriches. 

In 1 913, the Government inaugurated a Land 
Bank, with a capital of two and one half million 
dollars, to lend money at easy rates to farmers for the 
purchase of stock and for tiding them over bad years. 
The system is worked out to the very smallest detail, 
and shows the German genius for finance. Advances, 
which are made up to fifty per cent., are secured on 
the value of the property. The arrangement for 
looking after existing mortgages satisfies the creditors. 
From the Land Bank money can be obtained at two 
per cent, lower rate than from other sources. 

Dr. Rohrbach's hope that there might ultimately 
be five thousand prosperous stock-raising farms in 
the colony — and this was the estimate if every 
available acre was used — would not make the 
tremendous sacrifices of Germany, both of blood and 
treasure, seem worth while, were it not for good 
12. 177 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

prospects of mining exploitation. The country has 
been frequently gone over by geologists and pros- 
pectors. There is gold at a number of places. Rich 
gold-bearing lodes have not yet been discovered. 
What ore there is, is of the same low grade that has 
made mining development on the Transvaal Rand 
possible only by companies with large capital. 
Copper had just passed the experimental stage 
before the war, and was becoming a valuable export. 
In the first six months of 1913, copper was exported 
to the value of three-quarters of a million dollars — 
a substantial increase over the same period in 1912. 
Copper development has been started on an admir- 
able scientific and financial basis. Lead and silver 
are found with copper. Smelting is done on the 
ground. Electric power is used. The by-products 
are carefully saved. Tin has been discovered not far 
from Swakopmund, and over a hundred tons were 
exported in the first six months of 19 13. If the 
industry grows as in Nigeria, it ought very soon, with 
the short railway haul, to become a valuable asset. 

But by far the richest find in German Southwest 
Africa is the discovery of diamond fields. Herr 
Liideritz went to Angra Pequena in the first place for 
minerals and with no thought of agricultural develop- 
ment. The gold and diamond discoveries in British 
South Africa led him to hope for a rich reward. 
Neither gold nor diamonds came to him, or to those 
who followed him. The fortunate man was the 
German railway superintendent of the Luderitz- 
Auas railway. He believed that there were diamonds 
in the neighborhood of Luderitz Bay, and kept 

178 



GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA 

talking about it until people thought he was crazy. 
He instructed his employees to have their eyes open 
while they were digging the railway bed, and to 
bring him curious stones which they did not know. 
In April, 1908, his hopes were rewarded. A native 
brought in several diamonds. The exploitation 
began immediately. Within eighteen months the 
whole of the coast line to the Orange River had been 
prospected. Companies were formed and another 
railway was built. In five years the diamond industry 
became the most important in the colony, and a 
source of revenue that was a godsend to the adminis- 
tration. The diamonds are small, but of exception- 
ally good quality, and a good half of them clear 
white. 

A railway was constructed from Kolamanskop to 
Bogenfels through the diamond country in 19 13. 
Most of the mines and settlements are lighted with 
electricity from Liideritzbucht. Nowhere in Africa 
are mining enterprises and railways equipped and 
running as well as in the German colonies. 

The Government originally took a royalty on 
diamonds. It was changed in 1 912 to a tax on profits 
amounting to about forty per cent. The change 
shows the acumen of a Government in which brains 
is the essential factor. Under the old royalty system 
the miners picked up the stones that were easiest to 
obtain. For the royalty made no distinction between 
the stone found by hazard and that which cost a lot 
of money to unearth. Taxation on profits encourages 
the mining companies to develop consistently all 
their fields. The Germans saw that if the industry 

179 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

was to become a permanent source of wealth to 
the Government, it was imperative to discard the 
royalty system. 

The profit that the Germans derive from the 
diamond industry is shown by the development in 
six years from less than forty thousand carats to 
nearly one million six hundred thousand carats. One 
mine alone produced over six hundred thousand 
carats in 19 13. The German output during 19 12 
increased over the figures of the previous year, in 
proportion to the total output, twice as much as that 
of the South African Commonwealth. 

Until 1892, when the German people first began 
to believe in colonies. Southwest Africa was ex- 
ploited by companies, who held concessions and were 
partly subsidized by the Government. There were 
less than fifty soldiers in the colony, and the natives 
had no conception of a powerful German Empire. 
Government officials were very few, and were at the 
beck and call of the companies. The hinterland was 
not under administrative control, and absence of 
ports made coast communications difficult. Colonial 
history begins only with the twentieth century, when 
the British aggression against the Boer republics 
awakened interest in Germany. The Germans 
realized that they must develop the territories they 
held — or quit the game altogether. Over two million 
dollars was granted to Southwest Africa in 1901, 
and arrangements made to begin railway construc- 
tion into Damaraland northwest from Swakopmund. 
The line was to have its terminus at Otavi, four 
hundred miles from Walfisch Bay. Another line, 

180 



GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA 

already started directly inland from Swakopmund, 
was completed in 1902 as far as Windhoek, which is 
almost exactly in the center of the colony. 

At this moment began the conflict in the Reichstag 
between the Radicals and the Imperialists, which 
extended over five years, and which must he taken into 
account constantly in a study of German colonial 
expansion. It was not until 1907, when the Colonial 
Office was established, after the question of colonial 
expansion had been referred to the electorate, that 
Germany can be said to have entered with a free 
hand and with parliamentary and popular support 
into the work of colonizing. When one criticizes 
German colonial administration, and tries to estimate 
the ability of the Germans to develop colonies, it is 
not fair to begin before 1907. The German nation 
and the German Government must be judged only 
by what has been accompHshed since that date. 

When the Government proposed to the Reichstag 
in 1902 to subsidize the immigration bureau estab- 
lished by the Colonial Society, the proposal was 
rejected. The Reichstag majority was unwilling to 
use state fimds to encourage immigration to colonies 
that were unsuitable for European settlers. The 
argument of Germans abroad living under the German 
flag did not appeal at all. It was urged on the floor 
of the Reichstag that if emigrants were to be 
assisted, they ought to be directed to South America, 
and especially to southern Brazil. The subsidy 
proposal was made the occasion for a bitter attack 
upon the acquisition of the Spanish islands in the 
Pacific. There were less than three thousand five 

i8i 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

hundred Europeans in the Protectorate in 1902, 
spread over a territory one and one-half times as 
large as the German Empire, and more than a 
thousand of these were not Germans. A serious 
question arose as to the future from the entry of a 
great many Boers who had trekked once more to 
escape the extension of British rule. Severe measures 
had to be taken to prevent the country from being 
overrun by Boer irreconcilables. If they were 
allowed to come in large numbers, they would un- 
doubtedly soon be at loggerheads with the Germans 
and other Europeans.^ 

When the future of the German colonies was being 
seriously compromised, their existence, in fact, im- 
periled, by the radical attitude in Germany, an event 
happened in Southwest Africa that has changed the 
course of history. A revolt of Hottentots at Warm- 
bad in December, 1903, resulted in the death of a 

* Capital has since been made of the inhospitality of the German 
Government to the trekkers of 1902. I have looked into this question 
very carefully, and cannot see where the Germans acted in any other 
way than it was imperative for them at the moment to act. The 
Boers quickly outnumbered in some districts the German settlers. 
The very fact that they trekked was a proof that they were either an 
unsuccessful element at home, who had nothing to lose, or intractable 
to an extreme degree. The pastors with them immediately demanded 
a promise of education in the Taal language imder much more liberal 
provisions than the Boers have obtained in South Africa. Many of 
them, demoralized perhaps by three years of undisciplined warfare 
in commandos, wandered about the country, killing game, cutting 
timber at will and wastefully, and pasturing their flocks over wide 
areas. Many wells were destroyed. What Germany insisted upon 
was only that the Boers should submit to the laws and regulations 
governing German settlers in the colony; and the same terms of land 
settlement were proposed to them as to colonists from Europe. 

182 



GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA 

German officer and several non-commissioned officers 
and soldiers. During another native rising some 
settlers were massacred. In January, 1904, the 
Hereros began to murder settlers and destroy railway 
bridges and telegraph lines. In October the Witbois 
revolted. These events were due to the inevitable 
clash that comes in Africa when Europeans penetrate 
into the interior with their railways and their ideas 
of taxation and administrative control. Every 
nation that has attempted to colonize the interior of 
Africa has met with the same opposition. Th"fe 
wrongful treatment of natives by colonists and 
mining companies, who had obtained land by fraud 
and extortion and who were attempting to make the 
ousted natives work for the benefit of those who had 
ousted them, was frankly admitted in Berlin. This 
also has happened everywhere in Africa, when a 
government has parted with large areas of land on 
concession, and has not simultaneously organized 
an official supervision to protect native rights. 

The mistake of the Germans was in the way they 
tried to put down the uprising. Experience in 
colonial administration, and the presence in the colony 
of skilled administrators, might have saved all the 
trouble that followed. It was decided to send out 
German troops, under the command of a general 
who knew nothing whatever about native fighting 
and native psychology. The German miHtary system 
is presided over by an officer caste, whose arrogance 
robs it of tact and whose methods are abhorrent. 

We have not space to go into the long and sad 
story of the war that lasted until the summer of 1907. 

183 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Instead of trying to conciliate the natives and 
organize the country administratively through the 
tribal chiefs, as Sir Frederick Lugard did so admir- 
ably in Nigeria during the same period, Lieutenant- 
General Trotha tried to "stamp out" the rebellion 
by frightfulness. He set a price on the heads of 
insurgent chiefs, and issued a proclamation menacing 
the natives with extermination if the insurrection 
continued. When this became known in Germany, 
a storm of indignation swept over the country, and 
Chancellor von Biilow was compelled to declare null 
and void the disgraceful proclamation. Von Trotha 
criticized the Chancellor's "weakness," and attri- 
buted the continued opposition of the Hereros to the 
repeal of his proclamation. He was removed from 
his command. ^ But the mischief was done. It had 
now become a life and death struggle. 

More troops and more money were required as the 
result of von Trotha's stupendous folly. Germany 
now felt that the war against Hereros and Hotten- 
tots had to be seen through to the bitter end. This 
feeling was shared by all the Powers. For white 
supremacy throughout Africa was compromised. 
When von Trotha's successor passed through 
Johannisberg, Lord Selborne, the British High 

' The German people felt that the honor of Germany had been 
compromised by von Trotha's conduct, but not so the military caste, 
of whom Emperor Wilhelm is the high priest. After von Trotha's 
return to Germany, the Kaiser awarded him the decoration "Pour 
le Merite. " It is this contemptuous disregard of public opinion and 
the dictates of humanity, tolerated by the nation which does not and 
cannot approve it, that has alienated from Germany the sympathies of 
the world in the present war. 

184 



GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA 

Commissioner for South Africa, at a public banquet 
wished him success, and spoke in emphatic terms of 
the community of interests between German and 
British in South Africa. Many Boers enlisted with 
the Germans, and the Cape Colony forces rendered 
valuable assistance by killing and capturing the 
natives who were forced to cross the border. When 
the war ended and peace was once more established, 
nearly twenty-five hundred Germans had been killed 
and half the Herero nation was dead. The Germans 
had to undertake a complete disarmament of the 
natives. There were sixteen thousand recalcitrant 
prisoners of war on their hands, each one a Toussaint 
Louverture, who knew many German Leclercs. 

The war in Southwest Africa, unjustified in its 
origin and barbarous in the way it was conducted, has 
played, like the Boer War for Great Britain, an 
important part in colonial history, and marked the 
beginning of a new era in the history of Germany. 
Like the Boer War again, good came from evil. For 
it put the issue squarely before the Germans as to 
whether they intended to become a colonizing Power 
or not. It revealed to them the deficiencies and 
weakness of their administration up to that time, 
and the necessity of assuming heavy burdens if they 
were to build up an overseas empire. The year 1907, 
that saw the end of the rebellion, was the year of 
crisis with the Germans. The decision was in favor 
of colonization. Germany, freed of handicaps at 
home, was making rapid progress when the European 
conflagration of 19 14 caused the temporary, if not 
permanent, disappearance of her colonial empire. 

185 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

German Southwest Africa was radically trans- 
formed, root and branch, by the three and a half 
years of war. Administrative control, under civilian 
officers, superseded the old regime of private con- 
cessions and military posts. Railways that would 
have taken long to build (or might not have been 
constructed at all, because of lack of economic justi- 
fication for putting up the funds), were built for 
military purposes, and left as a precious heritage to 
the colony. The advertisement from the struggle 
brought colonists who would not otherwise have been 
attracted. Then, suddenly, just when colonists and 
money were needed for consolidating the new era of 
peace, the discovery of diamonds was the deus ex 
machina. 

In 1909, German colonists increased three hundred 
per cent., and the Government began to work hand 
in hand with the settlers to develop in every possible 
way the agricultural and mining resources of the 
colony. There were ten thousand Germans, exclu- 
sive of the army, in the colony in 19 14. 

At the outbreak of the war one thousand four 
hundred miles of railway, twenty-five hundred miles 
of telegraph line, and over four hundred miles of 
telephone line were the achievement of a decade. 
A cable touched at Swakopmund. The wireless 
stations — as the Allies found — were the last word in 
efficiency. The state had taken over the ownership 
of mines and railways, and farmed them out on 
leases. In the north the railway from Swakopmund 
to Otavi was extended in two branches to Tsumbel 
and Grootfontein. The southern railway formed a 

186 



GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA 

semicircle in the interior, with its termini at Swakop- 
mund and Angra Pequena. A branch of this line 
south through the Hottentot country had neariy 
reached the Orange River. 

A crisis arose in 1910, the solution of which 
demonstrates the wisdom and foresight with which 
Germany has been treating colonial problems in 
recent years. Herr Ertzberger proposed to the 
Reichstag that the expenses of the Herero war be 
met by an extraordinary tax on the property of 
the colonists. Dr. Dernberg, Colonial Secretary, 
promptly replied that the military operations had 
been the fulfillment of the Empire's duty to protect 
people and property under the German flag, and 
that the charges, or the greater part of them, should 
fall upon the Empire. He showed that three-fourths 
of the inhabitants of the colony had gone out since 
the Herero campaign. Such a tax would not only be 
unfair to them, but would kill the interest that was 
just beginning to be taken in colonial settlement. 
After three days of debate, the Chancellor was asked 
to initiate legislation for the relief of the Imperial 
Treasury by taxing the settlers and companies who 
lived in the colony before the outbreak of the upris- 
ing. In March, 191 1, the Colonial Office published a 
statement, containing a review of British colonial 
policy from 1767 to 1906, to prove that the taxation 
of possessions abroad was unwise, until the financial 
and economic position of the colonies made taxation 
justifiable and tolerable. As far as possible, the 
Empire should seek its compensation for the sums 
expended by the colonial budget in the development 

187 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

of commerce with the colonies. Local colonial taxa- 
tion should be determined by the colonists themselves 
and its proceeds used in the colonies. 

German Southwest Africa was conquered in 191 5 
by the South African Commonwealth Army, and is 
under the British flag. Its future is being decided 
now on the battlefields of Europe, where British 
South Africans are fighting in the British Army to 
make the conquest permanent. 



188 



CHAPTER X 

THE HERITAGE OF LIVINGSTONE AND 
RHODES 

NYASALAND and Rhodesia are names written 
on the map of Africa by the sacrifice and the 
vision, the will and the courage, the devotion 
and the endurance of two men. The missionary, 
Livingstone, was thinking about the Ejngdom of God, 
and the business man, Rhodes, was thinking about 
the Kingdom of Great Britain. But the former was 
not unmoved by worldly considerations : nor was the 
latter unmoved by philanthropic considerations. 
Livingstone cared very little about money and world 
fame: Rhodes cared a great deal about both. But 
missionary and promoter were at one in the desire to 
bring the blessings and not the curses of civilization 
to the natives of Central Africa, and in the belief 
that this could be accomplished better under the 
£egis of Great Britain than of any other Power. 
Obstacles, such as lack of maps and of knowledge 
of the interior, were nothing to the missionary who 
had devoted his life to blazing a path for the Cross. 
He was undaunted in the face of the hostility of 
tribes who knew not the white man and this white 

189 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

man's mission, wild animals, fevers, and — by far 
the worst of all — solitude. Obstacles, such as the pres- 
ence of the Boers on the road to the north, the 
territorial appetite of other Powers than Britain, the 
skepticism of those from whom the money had to be 
obtained, and the engineering difficulties of rivers, 
mountains, jungle, and swamp, were nothing to the 
promoter who had devoted his life to advancing the 
British flag by means of a railway from one end to 
the other of Africa. Both Livingstone and Rhodes 
were doers as well as dreamers. They were pioneers 
in fact and not in fancy. But, as we look back upon 
their life work, we see that their ability to fire the 
imagination of their fellow countrymen and to 
inspire others to join in the work they were doing 
has meant far more to South and Central Africa 
than their actual achievements. 

The name of Livingstone is connected with Central 
Africa from the Zambesi to the Congo. But his 
great work was in the valleys of the Zambesi and 
Loangwa and Shire and in the region west of Lake 
Nyasa. Nyasaland, where he was buried, is his 
particular country. Livingstonia, at the southern 
end of Lake Nyasa, perpetuates the missionary's 
name, and Blantyre, in the Shire Highlands, his 
birthplace. The name of Livingstone has also been 
given to the town on the Zambesi, where the Cape 
to Cairo Railway crosses the great river, just east of 
Victoria Falls. 

The name of Rhodes is borne by British territory 
in South-Central Africa north and south of the 
Zambesi River. Mashonaland and Matabeleland 

190 



LIVINGSTONE AND RHODES 

are Southern Rhodesia; Marotseland .is Northern 
Rhodesia; and the valleys of the Loangwa and 
Chambeze Rivers, and the little angle between the 
southern end of Lake Tanganyika, with the eastern 
side of Lake Mweru and the western and north- 
ern sides' of Lake Bangweulu, are Northeastern 
Rhodesia. 

The Nyasaland Protectorate is a narrow strip of 
territory running north and south. The northern 
portion touches German East Africa on the north and 
shuts off Rhodesia from Lake Nyasa the whole length 
of the lake. The southern half, south of the lake, is 
an enclave in Portuguese East Africa, extending 
along the valley of the Shire River almost to the 
point where the Shire empties into the Zambesi on 
its lowest navigable reach. 

The Zambesi, from German to Portuguese terri- 
tory, forms the division between Northern and 
Southern Rhodesia. Northeastern Rhodesia is 
almost separated from the other portions by pro- 
jections of Belgian and Portuguese territory, which 
make Rhodesia as a whole look like an hourglass. 
Both east and west Rhodesia has Germany and 
Portugal for neighbors. Belgian Congo is on the 
north and the Transvaal and the desert on the south. 
German Southwest Africa penetrates in a narrow 
strip of land up to the Zambesi River, not far west 
of Victoria Falls and Livingstone, through which the 
Cape to Cairo Railway passes.^ 

After the present war there will be readjustment 
of frontiers, especially if the Allies are able to impose 

' This was seized by Rhodesia in the early months of 1915. 

191 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

their will upon Germany and if they do not intend 
to keep the faith with Portugal. But the frontiers 
of 1 9 14 will always be a valuable historical record 
of how explorers and colonists and Government 
officials, with no knowledge of topography farther 
than their eyes could see, followed river valleys, and 
planted the flag of their countries wherever they 
happened to penetrate the unknown interior of 
Africa. Their controling idea was to keep clear the 
path back to the coast from which they had come. 

Nyasaland has only eight hundred Europeans 
and four hundred Asiatics among a native population 
of a million spread over forty thousand square miles. 
It cannot be said, except in the Shire Highlands in 
the extreme southern part of the protectorate around 
Blantyre, that Nyasaland is colonized at all. It is 
like Uganda and the Sudan and all the West African 
colonies — a country where the white man rules and 
trades, but where he does not settle. Strenuous 
attempts, since communications by railway and 
river with the Portuguese coast were projected and 
started, have been made to encourage European 
colonization. But from 1906 to 19 14 the European 
population increased by only two hundred. Dysen- 
tery and malaria have proved too much for the 
whites. 

In 1909, the Government of the Protectorate 
prohibited the recruiting of blacks for work beyond 
the confines of Nyasaland. This measure caused 
some irritation and denunciation in Rhodesia, But 
it was principally directed against the Transvaal, 
and was enacted for purely humanitarian reasons. 

192 



LIVINGSTONE AND RHODES 

It is interesting to note here that this measure made 
it impossible for the British Government to help the 
Transvaal in the negotiations with Portugal regarding 
the amount of traffic demanded by the Lorenzo 
Marques Railway at the expense of Natal and Cape 
Colony. For if Portugal had threatened to prohibit 
the yearly exodus of laborers from her East African 
colony, the British could have said nothing at all.^ 

The two matters of general interest in Nyasaland 
since the beginning of the twentieth century are 
native antagonism and the spread of Mohamme- 
danism. 

In 1908, a native prophetess by preaching that 
the Europeans would leave the country, and that it 
was a sin to pay the hut tax to the white men, 
obtained a great following. The tax fell off, and 
there was much trouble and ill-feehng in getting the 
natives of districts along the Portuguese frontier 
back to the habit of paying this tribute to the white 
man. It was believed that black fanaticism was on 
the wane. This was a grievous mistake. A religious 
organization, known as the "Ethiopian Church," 
with which it was impossible to find cause to interfere, 
spread in Southern Nyasaland, in the Shire High- 
lands, where the blacks came into contact with the 
whites. The doctrine of the "Church " is that Africa 
belongs to the black man, and that the white man is 
an intruder, who ought to be killed off until he is dis- 
couraged from coming to take the black man's lands 
and oppress him. In 191 5, a very serious uprising, 
which had no connection whatever with the Eiu*opean 

' See pp. 78-82 above. 

13 193 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

War, took place at the beginning of the year. On an 
estate at Magomara, the manager was beheaded and 
other white men killed. The heads were taken to 
the church for a Thanksgiving service. Simultane- 
ously an attack was made upon Blantyre, where 
arms and ammunition were captured. The rebellion 
miscarried, owing to a lack of coordination among 
the ringleaders. After two weeks, the police had 
dispersed all the bands in arms. It was found out in 
the investigation that the natives of Shire Highlands 
were more or less all in sympathy with this move- 
ment, the purpose of which was to exterminate the 
white men in Nyasaland and to carry off their 
women. It is easy enough for a thousand armed 
men to keep in respect a hundred thousand natives. 
But one wonders whether colonization is worth 
while in a country where there are many more sol- 
diers and police and officials than there are colonists, 
and where security is assured only as the result of 
eternal vigilance. 

Some ten years ago it was reported that a bastard 
form of Mohammedanism was pervading the masses 
in Nyasaland. Its growth had been remarkable 
since 1903. All the villages along the Shire had huts 
set aside for mosques. By 1910, from Lake Nyasa to 
the coast in Portuguese and German territory, and 
all around the lake shore and in the southern district 
of Nyasaland, a Moslem teacher was to be found in 
every village. When the Protectorate was formed 
in 1 891, Mohammedanism was non-existent. The 
propaganda had been carried on by Zanzibar Arabs. 
Although it is frankly opposed to European influence, 

194 



LIVINGSTONE AND RHODES 

British officials have not felt it incumbent to oppose 
the propaganda. The Nyasaland natives do not 
make fanatical Moslems, and it is believed that the 
movement will not spread south of the Zambesi. 
Christian missionaries are making strenuous efforts 
to combat Mohammedanism, and are, as in Uganda, 
meeting with considerable success because of the 
great desire of the natives to learn to read and write. 
In the country where David Livingstone died, and 
where an obelisk now marks the tree that bore his 
heart, militant Islam and militant Christianity have 
met to fight for the allegiance of the people whom 
Livingstone loved. 

The development of Rhodesia began only a quarter 
of a century ago, when the South African Company, 
under the management of Cecil Rhodes, was granted 
a charter for the exploitation of territories whose 
limits were vaguely defined. As settlers entered the 
country, and the necessity was imposed upon the 
British Government of organizing Rhodesia adminis- 
tratively, the south and north and northeastern 
parts were separated politically, and have undergone 
several changes in the last two decades.^ But all of 
Rhodesia has remained under the economic control 
of the South African Company, whose charter was 
granted for twenty-five years. 

Cape Colony took in the whole southern tip of 
Africa, south of the Orange River, which traverses 
almost completely the continent from west to east. 
There were to the north, on the Atlantic coast, 

' Distinct administrative districts have been called Western and 
Northwestern Rhodesia. 

195 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

German Southwest Africa, and, on the Indian 
Ocean coast, the British colony of Natal. Directly 
north of Cape Colony, Bechuanaland and an un- 
claimed and undesired hinterland lay between Cape 
Colony and the interior of the continent that Cecil 
Rhodes was developing. It was largely the Kalahari 
Desert. The hostile Orange Free State, north of 
Cape Colony and west of Natal, barred the way 
from the Cape of Good Hope to Rhodesia, and north 
of the Orange Free State lay the Transvaal, a country 
founded and developed by Boers who had trekked 
to escape British rule. These independent states 
were strong in fighting power, as the British had long 
ago discovered, and their conquest was not worth 
while until diamonds brought the British to the 
western frontier of the Orange Free State and gold 
made the Transvaal a prize that would return interest 
on enormous sums of money. Before the develop- 
ment of the Rand, a Jameson raid would have been 
regarded as the mad and criminal folly of outlaws. 
With the Transvaal stamps turning out gold, it was 
a wise and patriotic enterprise of pioneers. 

The Cape to Cairo Railway did not need to pass 
through the territory of either of the Dutch republics. 
It has not, in fact, done so. The line runs through 
the Kimberly diamond field, skirts the western 
frontiers of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal 
without entering either, and strikes north across the 
Khama Country to Bulawayo in Matabeleland. 
But it would not have been safe with two hostile 
states so near to it, and Transvaal trade and money 
were needed to make it, in conjunction with the lines 

196 



LIVINGSTONE AND RHODES 

running south, a good investment. The Boer War 
was essential to bring to fruition the dream of Cecil 
Rhodes to found an Anglo-Saxon state in South 
Africa. His last years were spent in the uncertainty 
and agony of the conflict which he had indirectly 
precipitated. He died the very week that the Boers 
gave up the struggle.^ 

Between the Commonwealth of South Africa and 
the British possessions that are now united under 
the name of Rhodes, are the Kalahari Desert, 
IQiama's Country, and the land of the Bamangwatos. 
The heart of southern Africa is a protectorate called 
Bechuanaland. The native chiefs have a large 
amount of freedom, and are under the direct author- 
ity of the British Crown. They pay for each hut 
five dollars per year to the British Commissioner, 
who resides at Mafeking in the Commonwealth. 
The Protectorate is in the South African customs 
union, and, when Rhodesia is ready to enter, will 
become an integral part of the Commonwealth. 

Rhodesia touches the Transvaal border on the 
Limpopo River, ^ near 22° S., and extends to the 

^ Naturally there is a division of opinion in South Africa in regard 
to Rhodes. While the British look upon him as the greatest states- 
man produced among African colonials, to the Boers he is the enemy 
of their race, and the unscrupulous financier whose only object was 
to exploit their country for his own benefit. Fifteen years after his 
death, their implacable hatred is still shown in the opposition to the 
scheme of having the national university placed at his Table Moun- 
tain residence near Cape Town. 

*Who does not remember "the great grey green greasy Limpopo 
River, all set about with fever trees," upon whose bank the Elephant's 
Child, "with his 'satiable Curtiosity, " got his nose with the help of 
the Bi-Coloured Python Rock Snake, of Kipling's Jiist So stories? 

197 



THE NEW MAP OP APRICA 

southern end of Lake Tanganyika near 8° S. At its 
widest point (including Nyasaland) on the 14th paral- 
lel of latitude, it broadens from 22° to 36° longitude. 
British authority in Rhodesia is represented by ad- 
ministrators for Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rho- 
desia, appointed by the British South Africa Company, 
with the approval of the Secretary of State, and a resi- 
dent Imperial Commissioner, who is the same for both 
the northern and southern administrative districts. 
^' Bulawayo, near the southern frontier, is the 
junction point of the two lines from the Cape to 
Southern and Northern Rhodesia. The southern 
line runs to Salisbury and connects there with the 
railway through Portuguese East Africa to Beira. 
From Salisbury there are several spurs, two from 
Gowelo and one from a point near Bulawayo to West 
Nicholson in the south. The northern line makes a 
wide detour to cross the Zambesi at livingstone, and 
passes through Broken Hills into Katanga Province 
of Belgian Congo. This will be the main line of the 
Cape to Cairo Railway, unless a different future for 
German East Africa and for the spur of Portuguese 
East Africa between Mashonaland and Nyasaland 
makes possible the connection of Salisbury and 
Blantyre, and a line from Lake Nyasa to Lake 
Victoria. In this way an all-British railway from the 
Cape to Cairo could be realized. ^ 

^ I found, however, in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan a strong feeling 
that the railway connection of Lake Victoria and Khartum, by the 
valley of the White Nile, is the very last project to be thought of 
in building the Sudan railway system. Economic and engineering 
reasons seem to militate against the building of tliis link of the Cape- 
Cairo all-rail route. 

198 



LIVINGSTONE AND RHODES 

The history of the development of Southern and 
Northern Rhodesia is not unUke that of Southern 
and Northern Nigeria, one territory developing 
rapidly and becoming self-supporting, and the other, 
because it must take in a hinterland of protectorates, 
costly to pacify, slow to yield returns, and showing 
each year a large deficit. Naturally the colonists 
of the prosperous portion — as well as ojEficials anxious 
to present a good budget — do not feel enthusiastic 
about the pooling of interests that would follow 
administrative union. But there is a difference in 
the fact that white colonists have become much 
more numerous in Rhodesia than in Nigeria and 
have good hopes of making the entire country a 
white man's land. The problem of unification 
has been complicated by the grievances of colon- 
ists against the chartered company, and by the 
demand, as in British East Africa, for self-govern- 
ment. 

As early as 1904, there were plans afoot among the 
settlers of Rhodesia to start an agitation to make the 
British Government expropriate the Chartered Com- 
pany, and make a Crown Colony of Southern 
Rhodesia. In 1906, when Lord Selborne visited 
Salisbury, he heard the grievances of the settlers 
against the company, and promised to bring them 
to the attention of the Home Government. In 1907, 
representatives of Matabeleland settlers told the 
directors of the company who were visiting the 
country that the white colonists demanded a voice 
in their government. The directors favored the idea 
of federation of all Rhodesia, and an ultimatum 

. 199 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

union with the new Commonwealth that was in the 
process of formation in South Africa. But they did 
not see how the settlers could ask for a voice in the 
Government, when all the financial responsibility 
was being assumed by the company, and when the 
company was investing huge sums for railway 
development. But in May the Legislative Council 
of Southern Rhodesia passed a resolution asking 
the British Government to extend representa- 
tive government to Rhodesia. There were now 
fourteen thousand Eiu*opeans in Southern Rho- 
desia, and the revenue of 1907 exceeded expendi- 
ture. 

In 1908, the South Africa Company yielded to 
local pressure and issued new regulations, which 
made taking up land much easier, and afforded 
settlers better facilities for transport and travel on 
the railways. In 19 13, after five years of unexampled 
prosperity, political activity was renewed. The 
twenty-five-year charter of the South Africa Com- 
pany was to expire on October 29, 19 14, and in 
extending it, the Crown reserved the right to add 
provisions or repeal provisions in the existing charter. 
The company claimed as its property a million acres 
of unalienated land, exclusive of native reserves, in 
Northern Rhodesia. There was already a big land 
question in Southern Rhodesia. Colonists held that 
unalienated ground is not the property of the com- 
pany, but Crown land administered by the company 
only because there is no other form as yet of ad- 
ministration. The Rhodesian Agricultural Union 
petitioned the Imperial Government to constitute 

200 



LIVINGSTONE AND RHODES 

a Royal Commission of Inquiry.^ The Executive 
Council passed resolutions stating that the Union 
could not cooperate in the general scheme of defense 
for South Africa as long as the Chartered Company 
were responsible for the government. 

Throughout 1913 and 1914, there was much 
confusion and division of opinion about the future 
among the Rhodesian colonists. They were all at 
heart against the Chartered Company, and preferred 
some other form of government. Rhodesia could 
hardly become a Crown Colony, for then the Imperial 
Government would have to indemnify the Chartered 
Company, and the country would be saddled with a 
very burdensome debt. Not many of the settlers 
were in favor of the alternative of entering the South 
African Commonwealth. Sir Starr Jameson, who 
had recently become president of the company, 
urged the settlers to support the Chartered Company, 
for the sake of their own prosperity and for the sake 
of the future political status of Rhodesia. He 

^ The land question in Rhodesia is very obscure. It depends upon 
the legal interpretation of the terms of the charter, and there is a 
case pending before the Privy Council at the present moment. The 
European settlers are against the company to a man on the land 
question. But the company — up to this time — can scarcely be 
accused of exploiting Rhodesia in their own interests. The share- 
holders have spent millions upon the country, and have been most 
liberal in their attitude toward railway extension. They have never 
had a penny of interest. It is natural that they should look some- 
where for a little reward for their confidence and a little return for 
their money. The case is not at all as if the company had been 
enjoying huge profits for years, and was trying to grab more, and to 
prevent colonists from getting the power into their own hands in 
order to keep going a profitable investment. 

201 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

warned them that the downfall of the Chartered 
Company would mean the inclusion of Rhodesia in 
the Union instead of a wonderful independent future. 
The elections to the Legislative Council in March, 
1914, resulted in the return of pro-charter candidates. 
It cannot be interpreted as an out-and-out victory 
for the company, but rather as the decision of 
Rhodesia not to amalgamate with South Africa. 
The colonists want self-government, and are, as in 
British East Africa, determined to get it. But they 
do not want it enough to enter the South African 
Union. There are only twenty-five thousand Euro- 
peans in Rhodesia, and they would be swamped in 
the midst of the electorate of over a million in the 
other colonies, the majority of whom are Dutch, 
and would interfere in many ways, especially in 
compelling the Taal to be taught in schools. Most 
of the Rhodesians are of British extraction, and have 
had a growing feeling since the federation was formed 
that they are "jolly well out of it." And they do 
not want to be a dumping ground for all the failures 
and poor whites who would work their way quickly 
into the new province. Only when Rhodesia has a 
large enough European population to be able to 
maintain local interests in a federal parliament, and 
to turn the balance in favor of the English against the 
Dutch, will Rhodesian colonists be ready to join the 
Commonwealth. In South Africa, too, the English 
extremists think as the Rhodesians do, and are 
praying for the day when a strong Rhodesian province 
— markedly Anglo-Saxon — will put the Afrikanders 
in a minority in the Commonwealth Parliament. 

202 



LIVINGSTONE AND RHODES 

Southern Rhodesia, nearest to South Africa, 
nearest to the mouth of the Zambesi, and with 
railway communications (to the Indian Ocean at 
Beira and into the Commonwealth) of much shorter 
distance than the rest of the country, has shown a 
very healthy development since 1900. Since 1907, 
revenue has exceeded expenditure. In 1909, the 
gold output was over two and a half million pounds. 
In 1 9 10, cotton-growing was started on an extensive 
scale. The cotton already sent from Rhodesia 
brought a higher price in the London market than 
that of any other variety except Sea Island cotton 
from the West Indies. Tobacco, citron, and rubber 
were yielding excellent results. In 191 1, the railways 
were earning sufficient to meet interest charges and 
leave a margin. In 19 12, it was announced that over 
a million acres were being cultivated in Southern 
Rhodesia, and that the Liebig Company had bought 
half a million acres for ranching purposes. When the 
war broke out, the gold production was increasing 
rapidly. 

As in other South African colonies, the two main 
factors of economic development are white settlers 
and native labor. Efforts were made in 1907 to 
attract immigration from England through the 
Salvation Army. Great hopes were based upon 
General Booth, who had taken up the scheme 
enthusiastically. It never came to anything. ^^- 
sisted immigration is wise nowhere in Africa. Since 
whites will not do manual labor of the kind that 
blacks do or any kind in company with blacks, the 
only settlers who have a chance to succeed are those 

203 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

understanding farming or stock raising or with a 
trade. In addition to being skilled laborers, colonists 
must also have some capital. Even where the State 
gives immigrants a start, after having assisted them 
to come to the country, a year of bad luck in the 
way of drought or personal illness (both are very 
likely to happen in Africa) is apt to ruin a man who 
has not funds to tide him over.^ Native labor is 
always a serious question. After Nyasaland pro- 
hibited labor recruiting in 191 1, immediately there 
was a scarcity of hands for agriculture in Southern 
Rhodesia and for mines in Northern Rhodesia. 
Complaint was made against the action of the 
Protectorate. But what could the Home Govern- 
ment do to Nyasaland for adopting a law which 
Rhodesia herself was enforcing? 

Northern Rhodesia, aided greatly by the boom in 
gold-mining and by the extension of the railway to 
Katanga, has been developing rapidly since 1910. 
In 1912, Lord Grey, in a speech at Bulawayo declared 
that Northern Rhodesia was likely to surpass 
Southern Rhodesia in agriculture as well as mining 
during the near future. A land bank was founded, 
as in German Southwest Africa, to aid settlers in 
getting started by advancing money on the security 
of their land. There were about fifteen hundred 

' Owing to the fact that grants for assistance are a fixed amount 
in the budget, and cannot be overstepped, an "assisted" colonist can 
look for a stipulated sum from the State, and no more, no matter 
what happens. There is no way of remedying this, because a special 
fund, set aside to meet unusual cases, would be swept away at the 
first drought or epidemic. 

204 



LIVINGSTONE AND RHODES 

Europeans in Rhodesia, north of the Zambesi River, 
at the outbreak of the war. 

One-sixth of the population of Rhodesia was under 
arms in 19 15, and five hundred went to join Lord 
Kitchener's army. Rhodesian regiments cooperated 
for the conquest of Southwest Africa and East 
Africa. It is their hope to get an outlet both to the 
Indian Ocean and to the Atlantic through German 
territories. If this is reaUzed, the British, through 
Rhodesia, will have done in the southern part of the 
African continent what, through Rhodesia, they 
prevented the Portuguese from doing — opening 
up a path under one flag across the continent. 



205 



CHAPTER XI 

THE BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND 
UGANDA 

SOUTH and north of the equator to the fourth 
parallel of latitude East Africa is dominated by 
the British. The large Protectorate of British 
East Africa stretches from the coast of the Indian 
Ocean between Italian Somaliland and German East 
Africa back to the headwaters of the Nile. The Juba 
River forms an eastern inland boundary with Italian 
Somaliland from the equator line nearly to 4° north. 
On the north are Abyssinia and the Anglo-Egyptian 
Sudan. The British Protectorate of Uganda is on 
the west, and Lake Victoria and German East 
Africa on the south. The Uganda Protectorate is a 
quadrangle at the headwaters of the Nile, between 
Lake Albert, Lake Edward, Lake Victoria, and Lake 
Rudolf, and surrounded by British East Africa, the 
Belgian Congo, German East Africa, and the Anglo- 
Egyptian Sudan. 

Uganda first came under British influence by 
exploration. The British title was not established 
until the Germans and British began to organize 
the hinterland of their East African colonies. In 
1894, a protectorate was declared over the kingdoms 

206 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

of Uganda and the tribes in adjoining territories 
that were known and accessible. During the first 
decade of the twentieth century almost the whole 
territory of the Protectorate, whose population is 
now about three millions, was brought under direct 
British administration. Where they have shown 
loyalty and ability, native chiefs have been main- 
tained. One province, Baganda, is still recognized 
as a native kingdom. Although the soil is exceedingly 
fertile, and the development of lake communication 
and the completion of the railway through British 
East Africa to the coast have given excellent means 
of transport, the climate of Uganda causes it to be 
avoided by settlers. There are only a thousand 
Europeans in the country, of whom considerably 
more than a quarter are Government officials. 

The railway from Mombasa reached Lake Victoria 
in 190 1 . It enabled the British to bring Indian troops 
into the country in fourteen days. The importance 
of the Protectorate, from the moment ofi ts establish- 
ment, has been political rather than economic. It 
was essential for the British to have control of this 
district in order to destroy the power of the Dervishes 
in the Sudan. Money and energy were put into 
Uganda, as into Somaliland, to keep it from falling 
into the hands of another Power. If the British had 
not gone into Uganda, the Germans certainly would 
have extended their territory north around the 
western coast of Lake Victoria. 

Winston Churchill, after his African visit, declared 
that Uganda was the jewel of the Empire in East 
Africa, that its negroes were the most intelligent he 

207 



THE NEW MAP OP APRICA 

had seen, and that the country was one of the most 
beautiful gardens in the world. He believed that 
when Uganda was developed, its traffic would make 
the railway a paying concern. At last reports, 
however, Uganda was still costing Great Britain 
very much more than it yielded, and trade was 
alarmingly large with the Germans and Belgians. 

The importance of Uganda in the history of Euro- 
pean expansion in Africa is that its creation pre- 
vented the Germans from controling Lake Victoria 
and the Belgians from reaching Lake Victoria. It 
has rounded out the territory of the British East 
African Colony, and gives to Britain control of the 
headwaters of the White Nile. 

During the period of our review, the devastation of 
sleeping sickness, the remarkable development of 
Christianity, and the interest taken in farming by the 
native chiefs are the events of general interest in 
Uganda. 

Throughout central Africa sleeping sickness, a 
fever carried by the tsetse fly, is the most formidable 
barrier to the progress of European civilization. It 
has prevented the spread of white colonization. By 
suddenly ruining great districts, calculations of 
financial return are made so uncertain that railway 
construction, where there is no political reason to 
prompt and justify it, has been retarded. In German 
and British East Africa, in northern Rhodesia, in 
the two large Portuguese colonies, in the Belgian 
Congo, and in Prench Equatorial Africa, sleeping 
sickness has made great ravages during the past 
twenty years. It has hampered the development of 

208 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

the southern Sudan. But its worst effects have been 
felt on the islands and the Uganda shore of Lake 
Victoria, which were entirely depopulated in 1908. 
Two-thirds of the population of the protectorate had 
died in six years. In many places the disease dis- 
appeared for lack of people to attack. Famine 
followed plague. The survivors were starving to 
death by the thousands. This calamity, far worse 
than any earthquake and comparable in modern 
times only to Chinese and Indian famines, awakened 
the Powers who had interests in Africa to the neces- 
sity of common action for combating the ' plague. 
But no more in medical than in political matters are 
international jealousies able to be compounded. 
The second international conference in 1908 closed 
without coming to any decision, because the French 
and Italian delegates were opposed to establishing 
in London the central bureau of the international 
organization. ^ 

The British sent a special sanitary mission to 
Africa. Segregation camps were established in 
Uganda, where the Peres Blancs of the Algerian 
mission did a work that brought much power and 
influence to the native Catholic Church. After 
three years it was announced that preventive 
measures were beginning to save lives from sleeping 
sickness. But the problem still remains. 

In Uganda, Christianity has made more rapid 
progress than in any other part of Africa. There are 
over two hundred thousand baptized converts, and 

' Great Britain and Germany later appointed a joint commission 
to study sleeping sickness for three years. 
14 209 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the rest of the Baganda race is under Christian 
influence. The adherents are almost equally divided 
between English Protestants and French Catholics. 
Unique in African history is the way that agricul- 
tural development, along European lines, has been 
taken hold of by the Uganda natives. One can 
attribute this for the most part to the influence of 
Christianity. We cannot expect Moslems and 
Pagans to comprehend and appreciate and take 
advantage of the European way of doing things until 
they have adopted the European religion. Not only 
our institutions, political and social and economic, 
but also our manner of thought, are the result of 
centuries of an evolution that has been shaped and 
dominated by Christianity. In 1913, the Baganda 
chiefs were reported as owners of large rubber and 
cotton plantations, and fast growing rich. The 
official report stated: "It is gratifying to note that 
contact with civilization has not had a deteriorating 
effect." Is the reason of this to be found in an 
inherent superiority of the Uganda natives to those 
of other parts of Africa, or in their acceptance of 
Christianity? The British Government has or- 
ganized the country, spent large sums of money on 
it, and brought it into railway communication with 
the outside world. But to the French Catholic and 
English Protestant missionaries is due the unique 
place of the Uganda natives in Africa. Unless they 
are given the moral foundation upon which to build, 
material prosperity that comes with European con- 
trol is to aboriginal races certain destruction — a 
rapid disappearance following deterioration. 

210 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

The British came into possession of the southern 
half of the coast Hne of the East Africa Protectorate, 
from the northern mouth of the Tana River to the 
Umba River through the connection with Zanzibar. 
The Sultan's dominions extended only ten miles 
inland, and were leased from him by the British. 
Between the Tana River and the Juba British 
sovereignty was established, as in the interior, by a 
Vague harking back to Egyptian rights and a practi- 
cal opening up and occupation of the country, treaties 
being made with local chieftains as the penetration 
progressed. A frontier was gradually decided upon 
with the Germans on the south, carried from the 
coast where spheres were definitely established, to 
Karangu Bay on Lake Victoria. 

The frontier with Uganda is marked by Lakes 
Victoria and Rudolf and a line drawn from one to 
the other. While the British were establishing the 
hinterland of West Africa and extending their 
Protectorate over the natives of Uganda, British 
and Egyptian troops were reconquering the Sudan. 
The settling of Sudan frontiers with Belgium and 
Abyssinia and Italy was accompanied at the same 
time (1902 to 1906) by the fixing of Uganda bounda- 
ries with Belgium and West African boundaries with 
Abyssinia and Italy. The British possessions then 
came to an understanding among themselves, made 
easy by the fact that their interests were all in the 
hands of the same arbiter, and that local opposing 
influences were lacking. The "all red" stretch from 
the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean by way of 
West Africa, Uganda, the Sudan, and Egypt became 

211 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

a reality between 1898 and 1906. Although the 
British flag waves over neariy a third of the continent, 
this is the only place in Africa where British posses- 
sions reach from one sea to another. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the 
East Africa Protectorate was an inchoate jumble of 
territories under the administration of the Foreign 
Office. Not until the end of 1906 were Orders in 
Council issued to establish a definite status for the 
country. A Governor-General and Commander-in- 
Chief were appointed, and Executive and Legislative 
Councils, the former consisting of the Governor and 
four members, and the latter of eight official and four 
unofficial members. Although still called a Protec- 
torate, British East Africa has become virtually a 
Crown Colony. When the strip on the coast leased 
from Zanzibar was freed of foreign consular jurisdic- 
tion in 1908, the last vestige of the technical Zanzi- 
bar connection disappeared. The four provinces of 
1900 have now been increased to seven, and effective 
administrative control is exercised throughout the 
Protectorate, except in the northeastern districts. 

As in German East Africa, the history of pacifica- 
tion and economic development is the history of the 
progress of the railway from the coast through the 
interior to the western confines of the country. The 
line starts at Mombasa on a small island close to the 
coast in the southern part of the Protectorate and 
ends at Port Florence on Lake Victoria. On the 
lake, steamers make the connection with Uganda. 
From Nairobi, the capital and most important 
interior city, there is a spur north to Fort Hall. 

212 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

Some distance nearer the coast a branch runs west 
to Lake Magadi. The railway was completed soon 
after the opening of the twentieth century. The 
southern portion of British East Africa has enjoyed 
the advantages of railway communication through- 
out the period of our survey. 

The railway has cost over £6,000,000, two and one- 
half millions in excess of the estimates. But there 
has never been any doubt about the political wisdom 
and financial soundness of the investment. As 
everywhere else in Africa, railway communication is 
a sine qua non of effective administrative control and 
of economic development. As in the neighboring 
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the railway, owned and run 
by the State, brings in a handsome profit, which 
makes the difference between deficit and surplus in 
the budget. From 1910 to 1913, the deficit of British 
East Africa, thanks to the railway, was cut down 
substantially and progressively. In 19 14 the colony 
became self-supporting. 

We have seen how the business basis upon 
which the finances of the Sudan were organized 
and managed, and the excellent budget showing, 
prompted the Imperial Parliament to pass without 
hesitation, shortly before the outbreak of the Euro- 
pean War, a bill to guarantee interest on a three 
million pound loan. The same facility was accorded 
to British East Africa and Uganda in 19 14. 

Up to 1908, the railway to Lake Victoria from the 
coast had profited enormously by Belgian and Ger- 
man through trade. But after the remarkable 
achievement of the Germans in pushing through 

213 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

their railway to the upper end of Lake Tanganyika, 
a serious falling off in railway receipts was expected. 
The rapid development of the country, however, 
produced the surprising and gratifying result of a 
railway profit of £66,000 in 191 1. Sheep were doing 
very well in the highlands. There was a great in- 
crease in cotton, lumber, and hemp export. Silver 
was beginning to be exported. Gold was discovered. 
In 1 913, although there was a decrease in rubber and 
the ivory trade was dwindling rapidly, the total 
amount of the trade of British East Africa had 
increased seventy-five per cent, in five years, and a 
good seventy per cent, of it was with the British 
Empire. 

The northern part of the Protectorate, between the 
Tana and the Juba rivers and west from Lake Rudolf 
to the border of Italian Somaliland, has not yet been 
developed, and is the only part of British West 
Africa to which the authority of the Government does 
not extend without constant military expeditions. 
The Ogaden Somalis, who cause so much trouble to 
the British and Italians in Somaliland, raid fre- 
quently the northern part of British East Africa. 
As in Somaliland, the Home Government has 
opposed a forward policy, and has refrained from 
occupying interior posts. The Ogaden Somalis are 
left to quarrel among themselves. After ten years of 
comparative quiet, the Somalis proved in British 
East Africa as in Somaliland that they would and 
could take advantage of a Government which shirked 
its responsibilities. In the spring of 1914, there were 
serious disturbances in Jubaland province. The 

214 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

Somalis seemed to have got a plentiful supply of 
rifles and ammunition from Abyssinia. They re- 
fused to submit to disarmament, and attacked 
British fortified posts. Troops had to be hurried 
from Uganda and Nyasaland. The Somalis, aban- 
doning bush tactics, tried to rush the British forces, 
who were saved only by their machine guns. When 
the general war began, the trouble had died down, 
but by no means could it be said to have ended. 
After peace is restored in Europe and Africa, the 
British Government must either occupy this north- 
ern country, or by strict coastal control and bringing 
pressure to bear upon Abyssinia effect a stoppage of 
traffic in arms. As long as the Somalis have good 
rifles and plenty of ammunition they will be a thorn 
in the flesh. 

Christian missionaries working in common or 
adjoining fields have found throughout the world 
that unity is essential, if real progress is to be made in 
converting pagans and Moslems. In the untutored 
mind there is room only for the essential fact of 
Christ redeeming men from sin through their con- 
fession of faith in Him and their dedication of life to 
His service. Antagonistic and competitive mission- 
ary propaganda is damning to the common cause. 
A native may be able to appreciate the difference 
between the Catholic and Protestant point of view. 
But when it comes to distinctions between various 
Protestant sects, the effect on the native convert is 
disastrous. From personal investigation in many 
mission fields, I have come to the conclusion that 
denominationalism in missionary propaganda is 

215 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

criminal folly. It leads to lives wasted in fruitless 
effort and useless sacrifice. It creates a prejudice 
against Christianity on the part of those who are 
being "reached." It means throwing away for 
nothing the money of those who support missionary 
organizations. 

Anglicans and Episcopalians on the mission field 
must make common cause with other Protestant 
denominations, emphasizing the evangelical note in 
their preaching, or "renounce their schism" and 
join the Roman Catholic Church. There is place for 
a middle ground in Europe and America, where 
Christianity has a historical background. But there 
is no place for "straddling" in a pagan country. 
This truth was brought out in the missionary con- 
ference at Kikuyu, where Anglicans, Presbyterians, 
Baptists, Methodists, and Congregationalists met to 
discuss plans for unity of action among the natives. 
The Bishop of Uganda described the aim of the 
Conference to be for an ultimate "union of native 
Christians in one native Church.^* At the close, the 
Bishop of Mombasa, assisted by the 'Bishop of 
Uganda, administered the sacrament to members of 
the Conference, irrespective of their denomination, 
in the Scotch Presbyterian Church. It was an epoch- 
making event in the history of Christian missions in 
Africa. The fraternizing — even to the sacraments — 
of Anglicans and other Protestants aroused a great 
deal of excitement and indignation among narrow- 
minded fanatics in England. When the Bishop of 
Zanzibar charged the Bishops of Uganda and East 
Africa with heresy, it showed that mediseval bigotry 

216 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

had found its way into the church mihtant in Africa, 
to weaken and paralyze effort where strength and 
stimulus were needed. 

The chief interest of British East Africa from the 
point of view of Europe in Africa since 1900 is the 
experiment of white colonization. It is important 
for us to follow the movement to attract white 
settlers to the Protectorate, and to note how the 
same questions presented themselves as in other 
British colonies in Africa, economic competition with 
natives, the color question, the exclusion of. Asiatics, 
the demand for self-government. What has happened 
in this colony is of utmost value in throwing light 
upon the solution of problems that arise everywhere 
in Africa. 

In 1902, Commander Whitehouse completed a 
survey of Lake Victoria, which had taken him more 
than a year to make. He announced that he had 
found on the east side of the lake a forty-mile stretch 
of enclosed water at the mouth of which was a 
valuable tract of high country and a large population. 
He was of the opinion that there was a possibility 
of this becoming a white man's country. Mr. Cham- 
berlain took back to England the same opinion, after 
he had visited Mombasa and had gone inland for a 
short trip on the railway. In 1903, the Governor, 
Sir Charles Elliott, said that a large part of the 
Protectorate was a white man's country, and that, if 
European settlers and merchants were encouraged, 
British East Africa would pay its way in ten years 
at the very most. In 1907, Mr. Winston Churchill 
crossed the Protectorate on his way to Cairo via the 

217 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Great Lakes. At Nairobi he declared that the 
highlands was certainly a white man's country, that 
the Government would reward settlers with market- 
able titles, and would prevent absenteeism by ex- 
propriation. In 1909, Mr. Roosevelt said at Nairobi 
that the country was "a real white man's land," 
and besides, "the most attractive playground in 
the world." 

Glowing official reports, added to the widely 
heralded remarks from distinguished travelers, at- 
tracted white settlers. They began to flock to 
Mombasa. The discovery of diamonds near Nairobi 
in 1907 brought more white men to the interior, and 
Nairobi became rapidly a European city. But from 
the very beginning there were difficulties. Racial 
and political agitation arose, as is inevitable wherever 
the Anglo-Saxon goes. 

Like many other colonies, beginning with the 
famous example of India, a chartered company was 
the original developing agency. As long as there 
were only natives to exploit, the company met with 
no opposition. But the moment the British colonist 
appeared, the company was a competitor, and was 
opposed at every turn. The conflict was brought out 
in rather an unusual and very pubUc way by the 
quarrel between Sir Charles Elliott and the Home 
Government. In 1904, Sir Charles resigned the High 
Commissionership, and asked for a public inquiry 
into the circumstances of his resignation. He 
charged that Lord Lansdowne had ordered him to 
refuse grants of land to certain private persons, while 
giving monopoly of land on unduly advantageous 

218 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

terms to the East Africa Syndicate. Sir Charles 
resigned rather than execute instructions which he 
regarded as unjust and impolitic. The Foreign Office 
ignored the demand for a public inquiry, but issued a 
statement to the effect that the East Africa Syndi- 
cate employed a large staff, was a responsible body, 
and had spent a great deal of money on its enterprises 
up to that stage. Sir Charles replied that the money 
had been spent on a fruitless search for minerals, and 
that the principle of a new company concession was 
bad, for it would exclude genuine colonization and 
European settlement. The granting of small private 
concessions was the only policy to follow, if the 
proper sort of white settlers were to be attracted to 
East Africa. 

The white colonists were opposed not only to 
company concessions, but also to the introduction of 
Jews and Indians, Umited leasehold of land grants, 
"favoritism" toward natives, and government 
without representation. Wherever John Bull goes 
he holds out for the good and bad in Anglo-Saxon- 
dom, just as vigorously if the flag over the land where 
he settles is British as if it is of an alien government. 

I. No Jews or Asiatics. When Mr. Chamberlain 
visited the Protectorate, he conceived the idea of 
offering land to the Zionist movement. When he 
first broached the subject in England, a howl of 
protest went forth from the few hundred Englishmen 
already in British East Africa. No Jews from 
Central or Southeastern Europe, of the type that 
private charity would set up in life, were wanted as 
neighbors in agriculture. They certainly were not 

219 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

wanted as competitors in small commerce. The 
Imperial Government paid no attention to the pro- 
tests. A commission was sent out to examine 
territory available for Zionist settlement. The com- 
mission went to Uganda, and decided to offer land 
there to the Zionists. The Zionist Congress at Basle, 
in 1905, declined the offer. Small wonder! For I 
suppose some of them had read the report of the 
High Commissioner of Uganda for 1904, which was 
published shortly before the Congress assembled. 
In it occurs this sentence: "Uganda will never be a 
white man's country, for it has no areas, as in East 
Africa, suitable to white colonization. " 

There were many Indians in Zanzibar and East 
Africa before the coming of the white settlers. Here 
was a country, directly controlled by the British 
Crown, where conditions, which Her Majesty's 
Government made a casus belli against the Boers of 
the Transvaal, did not prevail. The Indian, being a 
British subject, had the right to settle wherever the 
British flag flew. But the moment white settlers 
came in numbers to British East Africa, agitation 
against the Indians commenced. When Mr. Winston 
Chiirchill said at Nairobi that the whites required 
the cooperation of Indians in developing the immense 
areas of the highlands, the statement was received 
in silence. But much approval was expressed at his 
later modification that it was a mistake to introduce 
artificially Asiatic population before the country 
was ready. Only he was told that the country never 
would be ready for that, unless he wanted to drive 
away the white men there and discourage other white 

220 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

men from coming. In 1910, the London All India 
Moslem League protested to the Colonial OfSce 
against the exclusion of East Indians from the high- 
lands, where the best areas for settlement were alone 
available. It was contended that as indentured 
Indian labor was being used to develop British East 
Africa, it was unfair to prevent Indians whose time 
had expired from getting the good lands of the 
country for which they were performing essential 
service. The Government was warned that the 
maintenance of anti-Indian prejudice and discrimina- 
tion in East African legislation would react on the 
political situation in India. It is the same story as 
in South Africa. Although when the, war broke out, 
the question of the reservation of the highlands for 
European settlement had not been decided, it is 
certain that, unless this action is taken, British East 
Africa has no chance whatever of becoming a white 
man's country. 

2. No land grants with a string attached. When 
the Britisher leaves his island, where all the land is 
in the hands of a few, to start a new life, he wants to 
own land, and to know that it is really his and that 
its increased value through his own efforts or the 
development of the community will accrue to him. 
He wants the chance of enjoying what the privileged 
classes of England enjoy. The British Government 
did not seem to appreciate this in adopting a land 
policy for East Africa. In order, as Lord Elgin said, 
to hamper speculative acquisition and the locking 
up of the land, such as had occurred in the earlier 
years in Australasia, land was to be leased for ninety- 

221 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

nine years, with reassessment after the thirty-third 
and sixty-sixth years. The settlers protested against 
these terms. They said that this form of land grant 
would bar the flow of capital into the country, and 
would not attract the right kind of settlers. In 1908, 
after the limited leasehold policy was adopted, there 
were several failures among small farmers in the 
highlands, and applications for taking up land fell off. 

For several years there was continued agitation to 
return to the old system of out and out alienation of 
land. Sir Percy Girouard (who would not have been 
a high British official were he not enjoying the fruits 
of his ancestors' refusal to assent to any such scheme) 
defended the Colonial Office in their refusal to change 
the leasehold policy, and advised the settlers not to 
retard the development of the country by renewing 
the agitation. Sir Percy painted in glowing terms 
the possibilities of the future. British East Africa 
might soon be regarded as a new source of wheat 
supply for Britain, for the wheat grown compared 
favorably with that imported from France. Beans 
of various kinds could be produced in abundance for 
export and cattle feed. There were immense possi- 
bilities in timber and silver. A rich harvest in cotton, 
rubber, and hemp was awaiting the white men who 
would cast in their fortunes with the colony. Men 
with capital of from £800 to £4000 were urged to 
come. Men without means were needed to work 
under large landowners. But in spite of the increase 
of the prosperity of the Protectorate, land under the 
leasehold policy went begging. 

In 1 91 3, the Legislative Council was informed that 
222 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

the Colonial Office would accept the following 
principles of land policy: abolition of occupation 
licenses and issue of transfer licenses; abolition of 
requirement of personal occupation, if a manager be 
left in charge; stock to be included in assessing value 
of development work, expenditure on which would be 
extended over five years. These concessions were 
regarded as a step in the right direction. But the 
agitation continued. 

In abstract principle, the Colonial Office has acted 
in an enlightened manner in regard to land settlement 
provisions. Experience has certainly taught the 
advisability of a government, when conditions of 
land ownership are to be created, making those 
conditions preventive of absentee landlordism, 
fraudulent transfers, and holding land undeveloped 
until the development by neighbors or the work of 
the community gives the proprietor a wholly un- 
earned increment. But in land legislation one can 
neither go against human nature, nor prevent the 
working of the old law that to him who hath shall 
be given. Large estates are inevitable. The only 
logical way of securing for the Commonwealth the 
advantage of land values created by Government 
initiative and the industry of the whole people, and 
of preventing selfish landowners from holding un- 
developed land for an unearned increment, is to put 
the tax on land values and not on improvements. 

3. No social or political equality for the black man. 
Experience would have led one to prophesy in all 
safety that the coming of white colonists into British 
East Africa would soon create a native question. 

223 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Very few years of white colonization led to the 
necessity of a special parliamentary paper on the 
relations between whites and negroes.^ The official 
element in the Protectorate had long been accus- 
tomed to act with severity against Europeans who 
maltreated natives. For there were few Europeans, 
and those generally a bad lot; and injustice and 
cruelty on the part of whites often brought serious 
troubles with the natives. From the official point of 
view, wholly aside from considerations of justice 
and humanity, it was easier to be severe on one white 
man than to have to send an expedition to put down a 
native uprising. But when colonists began to come, 
the officials discovered that there was a most alarm- 
ing solidarity among them to prevent justice being 
done to native victims of the white man's temper 
and arbitrary punishment. Some Englishmen were 
prosecuted for flogging natives in 1907, and were 
convicted and sentenced. Much feehng was aroused 
against the officials, and serious consequences might 
have resulted had not the sentences been reversed 
upon appeal. 

In 1908, there was an vLnmly demonstration before 
the Governor's residence, largely on the ground of 
what the white settlers called his "pro-native" 
policy. In 191 1, the Honorable Galbraith Cole shot 
dead a native who was trespassing on his farm. 
Although incontestable evidence of his guilt was 
produced at the trial, and only a verdict of man- 
slaughter asked for by the prosecuting attorney, the 
white jury acquitted him. The Colonial Secretary 

' See Cd. 3562. 

224 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

then ordered the deportation of Mr. Cole. The 
settlers in British East Africa protested against the 
illegaUty of this action and what they termed the 
persecution of one of their number, and urged Mr. 
Cole at the time of his forced departure to bring 
action against the Colonial Ofhce in the English 
courts. In 1 9 13, a native labor commission, studying 
the serious difficulties that were arising from the 
presence of white settlers, recommended the appoint- 
ment of a native commissioner, a demarcation of 
native reserves, increased taxation and registration 
of natives, government control of labor recruiting, 
and restriction of liquor consumption by natives. 

4. No government without representation. As we 
stated above, East Africa was a growth. It started 
in the coast-land lease from the Sultan of Zanzibar, 
and gradually developed by a penetration in the 
hinterland, and a proclamation of sovereignty over 
Jubaland. The original economic development was 
in the hands of a private company, whose charter 
included also Zanzibar. Not until 1906 was there a 
settled form of government. Colonists in numbers 
and diamond prospectors first came at that time. 
Not a year had passed after the system of govern- 
ment had been established before agitation started 
for some form of self-government. When Mr. 
Winston Churchill passed through the country in 
1907, he told the settlers that the Legislative Council 
had been established for criticism of the administra- 
tion and not for its control. 

The unsatisfactory land policy of the Colonial 
Office and the agitation over the punishment of 
IS 225 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

white men who acted as their own judges of natives 
hastened what inevitably would have come later — 
the demand for local representation in the Govern- 
ment of the Protectorate. The Indian agitation of 
1 9 10 increased the determination of the settlers to 
have some voice in decisions affecting their interests. 
Sir Percy Girouard's tactic of calling attention to the 
material benefits that settlers were receiving, and the 
advantages that would be theirs in the future "if 
only they ceased to harm the colony and scare away 
colonists by their senseless agitation," was typically 
Tory, and did not go where there were Englishmen 
instead of natives to deal with. English newspapers 
were established at Mombasa and Nairobi.^ The 
settlers began to organize to compel the recognition 
of their right to participate in the Government of 
the Colony. In 1913, the Settlers' Association peti- 
tioned the Colonial Office that the unofficial minority 
of the Council be elected instead of nominated. Mr. 
Harcourt, radical in England, had no sympathy with 
liberalism in East Africa. His reply evaded the 
issue. The unofficial members of the Council, except 
one, resigned. Up to the outbreak of the European 
War, Nairobi was the center of continual agitation 
for a form of self-government, which would begin by 
making elective the representatives of the Legislative 
Council, and liberally extending the powers of that 
body. 

The Home Government point of view, unanimously 
sustained by officials in British East Africa, is that 
the white settlers of British origin are as yet far too 

^ In 1913 also at Entebbe, in Uganda. 
226 



BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA 

few in number to make self-government feasible. 
The country is large, and must depend upon the 
Home Government to guarantee its loans, to safe- 
guard capital already invested, and to attract new 
capital in London that will be put into the Colony 
only if the investors are assured that the reins of 
government continue to be firmly held by the 
Colonial Office. Then, too, settlers have not yet 
given proof of a desire to deal justly and equitably 
with the natives, who are the wards of the British 
Empire. 

Since the outbreak of the European War, the white 
settlers in British East Africa, regardless of origin, 
have shown gi^eat devotion to the Empire, and many 
of them have risked and sacrificed their lives in the 
long and arduous campaign against the German 
Colony on the south. Some, also, in the early days 
of the war left everything and went back to England 
to volunteer in Lord Kitchener's army. As in South 
Africa, the colonial problem will be elsewhere in the 
British Empire. The settlers of East Africa will 
undoubtedly profit by the privileges that Great 
Britain will be forced to grant to her colonials all 
over the world. 



227 



CHAPTER XII 
THE GERMANS IN EAST AFRICA 

ALTHOUGH East Africa was the last of the four 
German colonies in Africa to receive recogni- 
" tion from Berlin, and the last to have its 
definite status as German territory assured, it has 
become during the past ten years by far the most 
important of German possessions, and stood, in 19 14, 
as the most remarkable achievement in the world of 
German colonizers and German merchants. South- 
west Africa, with its forbidding harborless coast and 
its poor territory, illustrates the indomitable spirit 
of men who made the very best of the worst possible 
circiimstances, and created a self-supporting colony 
in spite of adverse political, geographical, economic, 
and financial conditions. Togoland and Kamerun 
share the general characteristics of other European 
colonies in West Africa. Although better "organized" 
than their neighbors, they show no outstanding 
marks of superior ability or superior energy. Then, 
too, in the last analysis, they share the handicap of 
all West African coast colonies of a climate that 
makes impossible the hope of a white man's country. 
German East Africa is a totally different proposi- 
tion. Its situation is admirable. It has good ports, 

228 



THE GERMANS IN EAST AFRICA 

navigable rivers, and mountain-lands. The climate 
is suitable for white colonization. Agricultural and 
mineral resources are very great, and not difficult 
to exploit. The colony is surrounded by rapidly 
developing neighbors, whose prosperity aids the 
Germans in many ways: the practicability of more 
frequent steamship service on the coast and lakes; 
profitable transit trade on the railway; adjacent 
markets for local and metropolitan trade, developed 
by German merchants settled in the colony; and 
emulation. German East Africa has the most 
advantageous coast line of African colonies: for 
there is an inland coast as well as a seacoast. On 
the north, half of Lake Victoria is in German terri- 
tory. Almost the entire western boundary is formed 
by Lakes Nyasa, Tanganyika, and Kivu. 

The colony is bounded on the north by British 
East Africa and Uganda, on the west by Belgian 
Congo, and on the south by Rhodesia, Nyasaland, 
and Portuguese East Africa. The islands of Zanzi- 
bar and Pemba, off the northern portion of the coast, 
form a British protectorate. Mafia Island, off the 
delta of the Rufiji River, was saved by the Germans. 
A conventional line from the mouth of the Umba 
River to Lake Victoria forms a boundary with British 
East Africa. The Uganda boundary is also a con- 
ventional line. Lakes Kivu and Tanganyika, with 
the river between them, form a natural boundary 
with Belgium. The southern boundary with Great 
Britain is the mountain range running from Lake 
Tanganyika to Lake Nyasa. The Rovuma River 
forms almost the entire botmdary with Portugal. 

229 



■/ 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Some distance out in the Mozambique Channel, off 
Cape Delgado, the coast boundary with Portugal, 
and the mouth of the Rovuma River, lie the Comoro 
Islands, belonging to France. Considerably farther 
out, all the islands (and there are many of them) 
directly east of German East Africa, and north and 
northeast of Madagascar, are owned and occupied 
by Great Britain. 

Germany owes East Africa to the enterprise of the 
great explorer, Dr. Peters, who founded the German 
Colonization Society in 1884, against the advice of, 
and with the warning of no support from. Prince 
Bismarck. Late in 1884, Dr. Peters made a series of 
treaties with the Sultan of Zanzibar for the posses- 
sion and exploitation of the mountainous territory 
back from the Indian Ocean coast between the 
headwaters of the Wami and Rufiji rivers. When he 
returned to Berlin in February, 1885, with the treaties 
in his pocket, he succeeded in getting an Imperial 
Charter. The German East Africa Company was 
formed. During the next three years. Dr. Peters 
gradually extended his privileges and territories on 
the Zanzibar mainland by successive agreements 
with the Sultan. In 1888, the Sultan leased all his 
mainland territories, south of the Umba River, to tlie 
German East Africa Company for fifty years, under 
certain stipulations. When the East Africa Company 
tried to assume the control of the country, some of 
the local authorities refused to recognize their 
Sultan's treaty, and rebelled. The German Govern- 
ment had to intervene. In 1891, the Company was 
in full control, and, during the last decade of the 

230 



THE GERMANS IN EAST AFRICA 

nineteenth century, developed its territories along 
the lines of similar British and French companies 
in other parts of Africa. 

The rebellion, however, changed radically the 
political status of the Protectorate, in reference to 
Zanzibar, to Germany, and to the world. When the 
British saw that the German Government was 
intervening on the Indian Ocean coast, they invoked 
old shadowy rights of the middle of the nineteenth 
century, and made the lessor accept a protectorate. 
They, in turn, leased the mainland of Zanzibar north 
of the Umba River. At the same time, the British 
claimed a protectorate over Uganda, and warned 
Germany that all territory north of Lake Victoria 
Nyanza was in the British sphere. Germany, in 
return, was recognized as owner of what the East 
Africa Company had leased from Zanzibar, and of 
the hinterland back to the lakes. In addition, 
HeHgoland was ceded to Germany as "compensa- 
tion. " At the time, there was so little public opinion 
in Germany favorable to an aggressive colonial policy, 
that only Dr. Peters and his friends felt bitter about 
being shut off from Central Africa. On thfe other 
hand, British statesmen congratulated themselves 
on having turned a clever trick. They never dreamed 
of the quarter of century of German naval expansion 
that was to follow, and the vital importance of 
Heligoland in making impregnable the German 
coast Hne and home naval bases. ^ 

^ Because of Heligoland, Winston Churchill's boast of two years 
ago, that the British would go into German ports and pvdl the Ger- 
mans out of their holes like rats, was absurd. 

231 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

The Treaty of 1890, however, was a great advan- 
tage to the British, not only because it prevented 
German colonial expansion in Central Africa, and 
gave them the coast line north of the Umba that Dr. 
Peters hoped to include in his colony, but because 
the control of Zanzibar and Pemba prevented 
Germany from establishing a naval base at Dar-es- 
Salaam or Pangani or on the coast line between those 
two ports. Zanzibar stands to German East Africa 
as Walfisch Bay to German Southwest Africa, the 
mouth of the Volta and Cape St. Paul to Togoland, 
and the Niger delta to Kamerun, an everlasting 
command — thou shalt not! 

The claim of partisan writers that Germany 
acquired her African colonies by trickery and bad 
faith is unfounded. In support of the assertion are 
cited the change of attitude of the German Govern- 
ment towards Herr Ltideritz in Southwest Africa 
and Dr. Peters in East Africa between 1884 and 1885, 
and the "conversion" of Bismarck. We are told 
that the German Government all along was behind 
these two men, and that the seeming opposition was 
a blind to deceive the British Foreign Office. The 
evidence is overwhelmingly against this accusation. 
Not only in 1885, but right along for almost twenty 
years after that, few German statesmen were favor- 
able to colonies. The colonial budget was a constant 
embarrassment to the Government in the Reichstag. 
The German electorate was opposed to colonization. 
Not until 1906 did the change come. Before Dern- 
berg, Germany had no colonial policy. Her acquisi- 
tions and her interferences in Africa, Asia, and 

232 



THE GERMANS IN EAST AFRICA 

Oceania, far from being the result of deep-laid 
Machiavellian plots against the peace of the world, 
were as much hit-and-miss, as hesitating and vacil- 
lating and uncertain of popular support, as the 
British Imperial program before 1898. I do not at 
all believe that Great Britain went into Egypt in 
bad faith, and that her repeated assurances about 
evacuating Egypt, frequently given to the Powers, 
were a wilful deception. I think that the statesmen 
who told the Powers so positively that Great Britain 
intended to evacuate Egypt meant what they said. 
But if a writer went at the Egypt situation between 
1884 and 1890 in the same way that English writers 
are going at the German colonial situation during 
that period, he could build up, from the attitude of 
British Ministers and their official utterances, as 
damning an indictment of Downing Street as of 
Wilhelmstrasse/ Both Foreign Offices were prob- 
ably innocent of intention to deceive, and were 
continually embarrassed and perplexed about the 
way events forced their hand. How often are those 
who get the credit or the blame for events as sur- 
prised when they occur as are outsiders! None 
believes them, however, and they have to take the 
reputation of being wise or sly or incapable. 

Instead of receiving the encouragement and the 
honors they would have had, if they were British 
pioneers and British organizing officials in British 

' Able French writers, in fact, have done this very thing. Eng- 
land's honesty of purpose in Egyptian diplomacy has been accepted 
in France only since 1904 — and then, not because of new light or new 
facts in the case! 

233 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

colonies, Germans who had to do with the foundation 
and early development of East Africa were treated 
with signal ingratitude. In England, Stanley was 
rewarded with a knighthood and election to Parlia- 
ment; in Germany, Dr. Peters was slandered and 
discredited. In British East Africa, Uganda, and the 
Sudan, the British Government helped the local 
officials in every way possible, and Parliament never 
turned a deaf ear to railway projects essential for the 
pacification and economic development of these 
colonies. The Colonial Loans Act, passed in 1899 
right in the midst of the Boer War, of which we have 
spoken elsewhere, has been of great aid to British 
colonies during the period of our survey. There was 
nothing similar in Germany. The Reichstag dis- 
couraged East African development by throwing out 
budget appropriations, while the Uganda Railway was 
being built directly north of the German colony from the 
coast at Mombasa to Lake Victoria! When one reads 
through the Reichstag proceedings during the first 
six years of the twentieth century, he marvels at the 
optimism and courage of the officials who "held on" 
in East Africa. They were denied the funds for rail- 
way construction. The rival British colony was 
getting, because" of its railway, not only Belgian 
trade, but also German hinterland trade. In spite 
of all this discouragement during the years from 1900 
to 1906, trade more than doubled in the German 
Protectorate. 

The railway across British East Africa was 
completed soon after the beginning of the twentieth 
century. The Germans interested in colonial de- 

234 



THE GERMANS IN EAST AFRICA 

velopment knew how important it was not to allow 
the rivals on the north to get too far ahead of them 
in establishing their trade in Central Africa. They 
tried their very best, by conferences, newspaper and 
magazine articles, public meetings, and Reichstag 
and Bundesrath discussions to get public interest in, 
and public money for, white colonization and railway 
extension in East Africa. The former could not 
come without the latter. Railways were essential 
for pacification and administrative organization of 
the interior. After the completion of the British 
Uganda Railway, a small — very small — beginning 
was made. A private company had started in 1896 
a railway from Tanga, opposite Pemba Island, along 
the Pangani River valley into the mountainous 
Usambara country. Half way from Tanga to the 
river it was stopped for lack of funds. In 1902, the 
Government took over the line, and pushed it forward 
to Korogwe on the river. In 1904, it reached Mombo. 
In the central part of the Protectorate, the route 
from Lake Tanganyika to the coast was served by 
slow, expensive caravan transport to Bagamoyo oppo- 
site Zanzibar Island. Porters carried on their backs 
the ivory, rubber, and other hinterland products 
to the sea, and returned inland with the imports in 
the same way. In 1896, when the line from Tanga 
was started, a railway inland from Dar-es-Salaam 
was projected also. Nothing was accomplished. In 
1900, when the Uganda Railway was triumphantly 
progressing inland, the Reichstag refused to vote 
twenty-five thousand dollars for a survey of the first 
section of a transcolonial railway in East Africa ! In 

235 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

1904, the Deutsche Bank got a concession for a single 
track from Dar-es-Salaam to Mrogoro. Work was 
begun in 1905. 

The dissolution of the Reichstag, in 1906, referred 
the question of colonial policy to the country. The 
general election was a victory for Imperialism. A 
completely new era commenced for German East 
Africa and all the other colonies. The Reichstag 
began to cooperate with Dr. Dernberg and the new 
Ministry of Colonies. Generous imperial grants were 
voted, and railway construction by Government 
initiative and by Government expense was started. 

In December, 1907, train service was initiated 
from Dar-es-Salaam to Mrogoro. The next stage 
was to Kilossa, which rapidly became the great 
inland city of the colony. In six years the remark- 
able feat was accomplished of continuing the railway 
directly across German East Africa to Lake Tan- 
ganyika. It reached the lake port terminus at 
Kigoma in 1913. Immediately the German railway 
became the shortest and best route from Belgian 
territory to the coast. The upper valley of the 
Congo, the extreme northern part of Rhodesia, and 
even portions of Nyasaland and Uganda Protec- 
torates, found in the German line the best outlet 
for their trade. Economic conditions in the Central 
African lake country were completely changed. No 
single engineering feat in African history has been 
wrought in so short a time and brought so important 
results. During the same period the ocean terminus 
of the railway, Dar-es-Salaam, has been transformed 
from a negro village, in whose suburbs lions prowled, 

236 



THE GERMANS IN EAST AFRICA 

to a "clean and imposing residential town, laid out 
with handsome squares and avenues, and furnished 
with substantial churches, hotels, and pubHc build- 
ings, and neat, white tropical houses. The ' harbor of 
peace' still shelters native craft, but majestic liners 
now ride on its well-sheltered waters. ""^ 

Before the construction of the railway — they could 
not wait for that — the administrative organization 
of the colony was started by the authorities on an 
extensive scale. After each punitive expedition, 
military posts were established. Following the 
remarkably successful example of the ItaHans in 
Somaliland, wireless telegraphy was included in the 
scheme of military operations almost from the 
beginning of the placing of upland posts. In 1903, a 
departure was made from the custom of other Ger- 
man colonies, which levied a head tax, and the hut 
tax, so satisfactory in some British colonies, was 
adopted. The Germans were continually studying 
the results obtained by British and French adminis- 
trators. The reports of German consuls and special 
commissioners all over the world included their 
section for the Colonial Ministry. Since 1906, a 
larger budget has made it possible for Berlin to 
receive information concerning the administration of 
rival colonies fully as complete as that which had 
long been received concerning their trade. The 

^ See Calvert's German African Empire (London, 1916), p. 196, to 
which I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness for the fullest and 
most illuminating account available in English of what the Germans 
have accomplished in Africa. The maps in this volume, and its 
careful statistics, are as valuable as Mr. Calvert's text. 

237 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Germans, like the Japanese, owe much to the fact 
that they are the best students in the world of what 
others in the world are doing. 

There has been, however, the handicap in East 
Africa as elsewhere of a too rigid bureaucracy, and 
the unfortunate Teutonic disregard of the rights of 
others when they come into conflict with Teutonic 
rights — or what are believed to be Teutonic rights. 
German missionaries had the same experience as in 
China. A bishop was murdered in the south- 
eastern part of the Protectorate, near Lake Nyasa, 
in( 1905, and several of his colleagues suffered the 
same fate. There can be no doubt of the truth of 
the charge that German missionaries, like Belgian 
missionaries in the Congo, exacted unpaid labor of 
natives, and that the system of entrusting adminis- 
trative districts to low caste native officials resulted 
in unjust exploitation and persecution. Until the 
Germans can recruit for colonial service a better 
type of men than they have had, German colonies 
will not be administered as well and as justly from 
the point of view of the natives, as British Crown 
colonies, which are the model and admiration of the 
world. 

A curious speech of Prince Hohenlohe to the 
Reichstag in March, 1906, showed the difference 
between German and British ideas of treating 
Mohammedanism. He explained that there was a 
broad distinction between the advantageous culti- 
vation of friendly relations with Mohammedan 
foreign powers and the attitude the German Govern- 
ment should adopt toward its own Moslem subjects. 

238 



THE GERMANS IN EAST AFRICA 

In the one case, German policy was dictated by 
"the necessities of the general international situa- 
tion." In the other case, it was the duty of the 
Government to promote the spread of Christianity 
in the German colonies. If favor was being shown to 
Mohammedans in Government schools in German 
East Africa, and if Moslems were selected for petty 
posts in preference to native Christians, it was 
because they had to accustom the natives to a 
Christian atmosphere before attempting to teach 
them Christian doctrine. Nothing could be more 
reprehensible and more pernicious than such ideas. 
Proselytizing is not a Government's business: but if 
it is undertaken, it should be undertaken openly. 
Moslems are too clever to be fooled. Being mission- 
ary enthusiasts and propagandists themselves, they 
respect the man who tries openly to convert them. 
He is doing only what they themselves would do, and 
they understand his motive. They see without 
difficulty through the dissimulation of indirect 
methods, and they despise the dissimulator — aU the 
more so because he has made religious zeal the excuse 
of his hypocrisy. ^ No German needs to wonder why 

^ As far as the eastern end of the Mediterranean goes, the French 
have made a fatal poUtical mistake in laying emphasis upon their 
traditional position as defenders of the Catholic Church. In Turkey 
and the Balkans, Moslems of very mediocre knowledge of the world 
know that France ten years ago drove the religious orders out of the 
country and confiscated their property, and yet in Moslem countries 
was granting at the same time large sums for the schools and religious 
propaganda of these very orders, and jealously defended their 
property rights even from fancied infringements. Books like 
Psichari's recent posthumous Voyage du Centurion, in which the 

259 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Islam has not followed the Turks in the present war. 
Arab Moslems are at heart enemies of all ghiaours 
(infidels). But, from personal and frank intercourse 
with them, in several countries, I have found that 
the Englishman is the only ghiaour they trust. 
They like the Frenchman better than the English- 
man. But they do not trust him. The German they 
neither like nor trust — except where they have never 
come into contact with him and know nothing about 
him. Why should they? 

In 1908, after a visit to East Africa, Dr. Demberg 
said that he had found the condition of the natives 
unsatisfactory, and the judicial system unfavorable 
to them. There were too many officials on the coast, 
and too few in the interior. He was opposed to the 
encouragement oi present of European immigration, 
but he had sent an Under Secretary to study the 
capabilities of the highlands for white settlement, as 
was being done in British East Africa. He returned 
with the firm conviction that it would be bad policy 
to restrict Indian immigration. The Indians were 
indispensable to the Government in many ways, and 
were an essential part of the economic life of the 

French soldiers in Northern Africa are represented as being each "a 
Christopher, carrying Christ," show that Prince Hohenlohe's views 
are not without sponsors in France. Among EngUshmen, also, 
"Chinese" Gordon has not been the only colonial official who be- 
lieved he had a proselytizing mission. A very recent example is 
General Sir Ian Hamilton, whose proclamation to the Turks assured 
them that the English were not coming to Turkey with any intention 
to destroy their independence or religion, and whose speech to his 
troops on the following day, when they were disembarking at Galli- 
poli, ended with the words, "You are starting upon the last Crusade !" 

240 



THE GERMANS IN EAST AFRICA 

country. This was in contradiction to the view 
expressed by the German Colonial Society's Congress 
the year before. The Congress had recommended 
that the authorities issue regulations and adopt 
measures with a view to the better protection of small 
German traders and settlers against Indian mer- 
chants, and suggested restrictions similar to those in 
South Africa. There were nearly fifteen thousand 
Asiatics in the colony at the outbreak of the European 
War. The European settlers had passed the five 
thousand mark, and over four thousand of them 
were native-bom Germans. 

In the ten years from 1903 to 1913, the trade of 
German East Africa increased five hundred per cent. 
In 1 912, it had reached over twenty million dollars, 
and jumped two and a half million dollars upward in 
1 9 13. In spite of extensive pubHc works, the budget 
did not show a large deficit. 

Contrary to what has been frequently asserted 
during these past two years, public opinion in Ger- 
many, as we have already seen in the matter of the 
putting down of the Herero rebellion in Southwest 
Africa, has been very much alive to the responsibility 
of Germany toward her native wards. One has only 
to read the newspapers and reviews, and to look 
over book lists, and to go through parliamentary 
debates during the past fifteen years, to realize that 
only in Great Britain, among all the Eiiropean 
colonizing Powers, has there been manifested as 
much humanitarianism and ideaHsm as in Germany 
with regard to the establishment and maintenance 
of a just and enlightened colonial regime. At this 
16 241 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

moment, it is exceedingly important that this state- 
ment be made by one who cannot be suspected of 
sympathizing with Germany in the present war or of 
trying to plead the German cause. The truth is the 
truth. Only on the truth can the future be built. 
In France, in Belgium, in Portugal, in Italy, in 
Russia one looks in vain to jEind so widespread and 
so important a championing of the cause of native 
races as one finds in Germany. 

In the early part of 19 14, the Reichstag passed a 
resolution asking for the abolition of serfdom in East 
Africa before January i, 1920. A Government white 
paper pointed out that it would be dangerous to fix 
a date for abolition. But at the outbreak of the war 
German public opinion was still demanding that this 
date be fixed. In East Africa, Germany had been 
dealing with the slavery question very much as 
Great Britain dealt with it in Zanzibar. It was 
enacted in 1905 that no native could be born in 
slavery after that year, and that slaves could pur- 
chase their freedom for a small sum, which masters 
are not allowed to prevent them from earning. In 
eight years nearly twenty thousand had emancipated 
themselves by their own efforts. It was estimated 
that only eighty-five thousand were left, and that in 
fifteen years slavery would disappear entirely. The 
white paper used practically the same arguments as 
those of the British authorities in Zanzibar against 
the hastening of the emancipation process by fixing 
an arbitrary date, while there were still many old 
slaves alive. For these would be left without means 
of existence. 

242 



THE GERMANS IN EAST AFRICA 

To mark the thirtieth anniversary of the colony, 
an exhibition was being prepared for August, 19 14, 
at Dar-es-Salaam. When August arrived, the Ger- 
mans in East Africa were cut off from the rest of the 
world. Left to their own resources, they managed 
to carry on a resistance that is just drawing to a close 
when these lines are being written in October, 19 16. 



24s 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE PROBLEM OF THE PORTUGUESE 
COLONIES 

IN the fourteenth century, one hundred years 
before a united monarchy ruled over Spain, 
disHke and fear of the Spaniards led Portugal 
to seek foreign aid to prevent absorption in the 
unification of the Iberian Peninsula. There were 
later treaties with Charles L, Cromwell, and Charles 
II. The infeodation of Portugal to England was 
completed by the Methuen Treaty, signed shortly 
after the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Suc- 
cession. For over two hundred years Britain has 
held the Portuguese in a state of complete vassalage. 
She used the Portuguese against Spain and against 
France to break their sea power and their budding 
colonial empires. Now Germany is having the same 
experience. 

The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1703 put Portugal 
in economic as well as political dependence upon 
England. During two hundred years this dependence 
was contested only by Napoleon. At the end of 
the nineteenth century the British began to feel 
anew the danger of a change in the comfortable 
status quo they enjoyed in regard to Portugal. Ger- 

244 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

many loomed up as a successful economic rival. 
Her representatives started to "intrigue" at Lisbon. 
The reason for Germany's interest was the valuable 
Portuguese colonial empire, which financial difficul- 
ties and poHtical decadence made Portugal incapable 
of exploiting. Spain saw the disappearance of her 
colonial empire in the war of 1898 with the United 
States. Could Portugal hope to hold much longer 
her overseas possessions? 

When Germany entered Africa her two great 
southern colonies became neighbors of . Portugal. 
She installed herself on the coast of the Atlantic 
south of Portuguese West Africa, and on the coast of 
the Indian Ocean north of Portuguese East Africa. 
In 1887, a treaty was signed delimiting the Germano- 
Portuguese frontiers on the Indian Ocean side of the 
continent, which was immediately followed by an 
extension of commercial interests in Portugal and 
in the Portuguese colonies. 

It was an advantageous moment for Germany. 
The British penetration north from the Cape towards 
the center of Africa brought Great Britain and 
Portugal into conflict. Portugal, relying upon the 
general interpretation as to hinterland possessions 
agreed upon in the international conferences about 
African spheres of influence, believed that she had 
the right to the interior of Africa between her colonies 
on the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. But the 
British won over native chiefs in Nyasaland and 
along the Zambesi valley. An ultimatum was 
presented to Portugal in 1890. The oldest colonizer 
of Africa had to bow to force. On June 11, 1891, a 

245 



THE NEW MAP OP AFRICA 

treaty was signed which destroyed forever the hopes 
of Portugal to a transcontinental African colony, 
just as the same argument of force, applied eight 
years later to France, destroyed forever similar hopes 
of French Imperialists in North Africa. I do not 
mean to imply that the British were acting towards 
Portugal and towards France in an indefensible 
manner. The enterprise of British explorers and 
the energy and ability of British military and civil 
officials to profit by the principle of carpe diem 
brought the reward which is "the way of the world. " 
But, as is also "the way of the world," the final 
and convincing argument applied both to Portugal 
and France in Africa was superior force. Yet that 
the Lisbon and Fashoda ultimatums did not alienate' 
Portugal and France definitely from Great Britain is 
a tribute not only to British diplomacy but also to 
the confidence bom of experience in Anglo-Saxon 
fair dealing — once Anglo-Saxon pretensions are ac- 
knowledged and claims admitted. 

The last years of the nineteenth century were 
marked by an event which, in the light of present 
events, might have been a turning-point in history. 
Chamberlain, Rhodes, and other British Imperialists 
of the early days were firm believers in the necessity 
of building the future of Great Britain, especially 
in Africa, upon the foundation of an understanding 
with Germany. Rhodes saw peace and prosperity 
for Great Britain, and the realization of his dreams in 
, Africa, only in harmony between the two great Teutonic 
races of Europe, which was to he shared with Anglo- 
Saxon countries overseas, the United States, Canaday 

246 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

and Australia. His South African empire was to 
cooperate with German Southwest Africa and 
German East Africa. If Portugal could be made to 
develop her African heritage herself, Great Britain 
and Germany were to stand behind her and help her. 
If Portugal proved hopelessly beyond reform, Great 
Britain and Germany should divide the Portuguese 
colonies. 

Mr. Rhodes visited Berlin, and talked over with ^ 
the Germans his plans of railway expansion in South f 
and Central Africa. He secured Germany's consent 
to join in railway schemes that would bind the 
system he had in mind for British penetration in the 
interior with outlets through German and Portuguese 
territories to the coast. Mr. Chamberlain signed 
a treaty with Germany in 1898, providing for an 
eventual partition of the Portuguese colonies between 
Germany and Great Britain. This treaty has never 
been published: but it was not officially denied at 
the time, nor has it been since. Germany was to 
have the Portuguese possessions in Asia; East 
Africa south to the junction of the Zambesi and 
Shire rivers; and West Africa north to Cape Santa 
Maria, including the whole of Mossamedes. Great 
Britain was to cede Walfisch Bay to Germany, and 
receive the rest of Portugal's African possessions. 
According to British explanation, semi-ofhcially 
made after the secret leaked out, the two Powers 
had no intention of buying or seizing the Portu- 
guese colonies or of impairing the legitimate 
sovereignty of Portugal. They were simply ar- 
ranging "economic spheres" — something Hke the 

247 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

later Russian and British spheres in Persia, I sup- 
pose!^ 

The Boer War and the accession of Edward VII. 
brought a change in Anglo-German relations. Ger- 
man industry, German commerce, and the German 
naval program alienated British opinion from the 
policy of Rhodes and Chamberlain. Germany 
and Great Britain drifted apart. In 1904 came 
the agreement with France. In 1907, the agree- 
ment with Russia made it clear that Great Britain had 
thrown in her lot with Germany's enemies. But 
the will of Cecil Rhodes stands as the record of what 
he believed was the hope of the future of Anglo- 
Saxondom and the basis of peace for the world in the 
twentieth century. He expressed the hope that his 
countrymen would cultivate the friendship of Ger- 
many in the most unmistakable terms. He felt 
deeply the necessity of Anglo-Saxon solidarity. He 
left money to enable Americans and Germans to 
study at Oxford, in the "implicit belief that a good 
understanding between England and the United 
States of America and Germany would secure the 

^ See Berlin Lokalanzeiger, December 28, 1899, and London 
newspapers passim, during January, 1900. Cf. A. Marvaud, Le 
Portugal et ses Colonies (Alcan, Paris, 1912), p. 58. " II est difficile 
de pousser plus loin I'hypocrisie, " writes M. Marvaud. I gratefully 
acknowledge my indebtedness to this illuminating volume, a careful 
economic study of the Portuguese colonies, which has helped me 
greatly. Most of this chapter, however, and especially what is 
said of the rivalry between Germany and Great Britain and the 
effect of the problem of the Portuguese colonies on their foreign policy, 
is taken verbatim from an article I wrote in Constantinople two years 
before the appearance of M. Marvaud's book and four years before 
the war. 

248 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

peace of the world and that educational relations 
form the strongest tie." 

Events may not have proved that Cecil Rhodes 
was right: but they have yet to prove that he was 
wrong. 

As elsewhere in the world, and especially in Africa, 
the increase of German trade and the multiplication 
of German enterprises has been especially marked in 
Portugal and the Portuguese colonies since 1900. 
German imports to Portugal more than doubled 
between 1900 and 1910, and the German carrying 
trade was threatening to displace that of Great 
Britain in 1913. Germany's increase, proportion- 
ately, was far greater than that of any other nation, 
both in trade and shipping. In the Portuguese col- 
onies the figures are eloquent. In spite of vexatious 
tariff discrimination and port regulations, German 
ships were bringing each year a notable increase 
of German goods to Portuguese colonies in Africa 
and were taking the exports to Hamburg, very often 
to be resold and reshipped there in German bottoms 
to the very country which owned the colonies!^ 

The alarm that has been felt in recent years by the 
British over the possibility of Germany getting 
a foothold for coaHng stations and naval bases 
in the Portuguese colonies is illustrated by the 
sanatoriums incident in Madeira. In April, 1903, a 
German artillery officer, who had gone to Funchal 
for his health, secured a concession for sanatoriums 
and hotels for invalids. He had formed a company 
and the terms of the concession allowed gambling. 

^ See below, p. 

249 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

The London press immediately took up the matter 
and declared that Germany was trying to "invade" 
Madeira. They called attention to the fact that the 
island was "only some hours distant from Gibraltar, " 
that the Germans would expel English merchants, 
create a "diplomatic incident," and end up by 
installing themselves in the Portuguese islands. 
The British Minister at Lisbon was instructed to 
declare to the Portuguese Government that Great 
Britain would not permit the German company to 
acquire any privilege to the detriment of British 
subjects. The German concession had in it a clause 
allowing expropriation. When the Germans tried to 
expropriate a property belonging to an Englishman, 
the crisis became acute. 

The Portuguese Government was not allowed to 
refer the matter to the Hague Tribunal, or even to 
offer the Sanatoriums Company another property in 
exchange for the one they desired to expropriate. 
Great Britain insisted on the concession being 
cancelled. For years the matter hung fire: the Ger- 
man company demanded a large indemnity. Later, 
a new company, almost entirely English in its stock- 
holders, applied at Lisbon for the gambling conces- 
sion, with the intention of working along the German 
lines. In 1909, there was again a great campaign in 
the London press over German "intrigues " at Lisbon. 
It was claimed that Germany was trying to buy some 
small islands off the Portuguese coast, and that 
Germans were being given privileges at Lorenzo 
Marques. 

British public opinion has always been unalter- 
250 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

ably opposed to transfers of territory anywhere in 
the world that might affect her position as "mistress 
of the seas." To maintain her world supremacy, 
Great Britain is always willing to fight. That is 
reasonable. One likes to keep what one has, and to 
prevent others from changing the status quo. The 
historian has no quarrel with the frank expression 
of this determination. But he has a quarrel with the 
strange and altogether untenable idea that other 
nations are "faithless" and guilty of "treachery" 
and "brutality" and "disturbing the world's peace, " 
who try to carve out for themselves a place in the 
world by following the same path of acquisition along 
which Britain and her predecessors in world empire 
have intrigued and bluffed and fought their way. 
Denying that the past has any effect on the present 
is as illogical as it is pernicious. We cannot be 
surprised at and denounce and try to remedy ef- 
fects unless we make a sincere and detached study of 
causes. 

The Madeira and Azores islands are an integral 
part of Portugal. Since Spain lost her colonies, the 
Portuguese colonial possessions in Africa and Asia 
are, in extent of territory, larger than those of any 
country in the world, except Great Britain, France, 
and Germany. They have not, however, as large 
a population as the colonies of Holland. Aside from 
a foothold in China at Macao, and small bits of terri- 
tory in India and the Malay Archipelago, which 
mean little more than the memory of ancient glory, ^ 

' To a Power like Germany, which has so few footholds in the 
world, Goa, Damao, Diu, Macao, and Timor might prove of value 

. 251 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Portugal as a colonial Power has her interests in 
Africa, and is important only in Africa. 

Portuguese colonies in Africa consist of the Cape 
Verde Islands, a group in the Atlantic off the western 
shores of the continent, where its bend is most 
accentuated; Guinea, an enclave, wholly surrounded 
by French West African territories; Sao Thome and 
Principe, two islands in the Gulf of Guinea; Portu- 
guese West Africa (Angola), from the mouth of the 
Congo south to German Southwest Africa; and 
Portuguese East Africa from Cape Delgado, bound- 
ary with German East Africa, south to Delagoa 
Bay, which cuts off the Transvaal from the sea, and is 
just north of Natal. These colonies cover nearly 
eight hundred thousand square miles, and have a 
population of over eight millions. 

There are fourteen islands, some very small, in 
the Cape Verde group. As they are on the route 
from Europe to South America, and command the 
coastal passage around Africa, their situation is of 
unusual importance. The cables to Brazil and to 
South Africa touch St. Vincent, and also the line to 
Bathurst, in British Gambia. In the hands of a 
Power like Germany, these islands could easily 
become an incomparable naval base, coaling station, 
and wireless telegraphy center. To Portugal they 
have no value. The Portuguese have not been able 
to develop them in the interest of their inhabitants : 
nor have they made use of the advantage that the 

as naval, coaling, and wireless stations. To Great Britain or France, 
who have many ports and islands in the same waters, they would be 
of no value, except to keep out someone else. 

252 



PROBLEM OP PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

route to South America passes between the two north- 
em islands of the group, St. Anthony and St. Vincent. 
Agriculture is in a deplorable state. The inhabi- 
tants have not even been taught to use plows. They 
have been allowed to destroy the trees of the islands 
by unchecked goat pasturage. The natives are in 
a state of distressing degradation. An enterprising 
nation would not only make the islands pay by their 
cultivation, and lift the inhabitants to the level of 
European civilization; but would also profit by the 
situation on the trade routes to establish coaling 
and provision depots and dry docks. The lamentable 
state of civilization in the Cape Verde Islands is a 
striking proof of Portugal's inability to discharge the 
duties of her stewardship. 

Guinea tells the same sad story. It is traversed 
by three deep rivers, and off its coast are numerous 
islands. The possibilities of a strong fortified harbor 
and of developing a splendid trade with the interior 
are greater in Guinea than in the neighboring posses- 
sions of France and Great Britain. What Senegal 
and French Guinea and Gambia and Sierra Leone 
are, is the strongest possible indictment of Portugal 
as a colonial power. The colony has fertile soil, rich 
forests, unrivaled means of communication by water 
with the interior, and the protection of a compact 
group of islands just off the coast. Where France 
and Great Britain have wrought miracles in the 
immediate neighborhood of Guinea under far less 
favorable conditions, Portugal has done absolutely 
nothing. The French and British colonies more 
than pay for themselves. Gmnea shows a large 

253 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

yearly deficit. Outside of four towns, the Portuguese 
occupy few places and develop none. Portugal's 
title to Guinea is a disaster to the inhabitants, who 
are good workers, owning good land. When the 
boundary between France and Portugal was definitely 
fixed in 1906, the French Commissioners saw what a 
rich country, easy to exploit, was being ruined. To 
those on the Portuguese side it was "abandon hope, 
you who are fated to remain here." The wealth of 
the forests is almost entirely neglected. 

The port of Bissao is connected only monthly 
with Lisbon. The greater part of the commerce, 
both exports and imports, is in the hands of Ger- 
many. 

Sao Thome and Principe are beautiful islands, 
fertile, and, when one takes into consideratioii their 
nearness to the equator, salubrious. Almost every- 
thing in the way of tropical product has been tried 
on these two islands. But during the past quarter of 
a century, cocoa has been grown so successfully that 
it now furnishes ninety-five per cent of the total 
exportation, and has given to the Portuguese Minis- 
try of Colonies the delightful and unaccustomed 
surprise of a colony with a budget surplus. And yet 
only a third of the total area is cultivated and only a 
sixth is worked to yield in a scientific modern way. 
For there are no satisfactory means of communication. 
When cocoa first became a source of wealth easier to 
tap than gold mines, the question of establishing 
means of transport and communications that would 
put the two islands wholly under modern cultivation 
was raised. In fact, a law was passed in 1899 for 

254 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

railway construction. It has been pushed (?) in so 
typically Portuguese a manner that nine miles have 
been completed on Sao Thome in fifteen years, and 
the plans for Principe are still being studied. Roads 
and little coast ports and overhead cables have also 
been planned. They may come in time. Up to now, 
the backs of negroes still afford the chief means of 
transport. The trouble is that the Portuguese 
Government uses the surplus from the cocoa industry 
of these islands to try to meet the huge deficits of 
the other colonies. 

Portuguese exploitation of native labor in Sao 
Thome and Principe stands forth, next to the rubber 
atrocities of Belgium in the Congo, as the darkest 
page of European colonization in Africa. In 1907, 
when the Congo agitation was at its height, Mr. 
H. W. Nevinson made a trip through Angola, starting 
inland from Loanda and coming out to the coast at 
Benguela. He then visited the two cocoa islands. 
His book, Modern Slavery, is a terrible indictment of 
Portuguese officialdom and greed. He proved that 
the method of recruiting laborers in Angola for the 
cocoa plantations was slave trade of the most heart- 
rending sort. Portugal was compelling her main- 
land natives to go to Sao Thome and Principe to work 
on the cocoa plantations. They were recruited with 
no consideration whatever for principles of human- 
ity, and were allowed to suffer and die on the islands, 
driven to work as the Pharaohs used to drive their 
subjects to pyramid-building. Mr. Nevinson said 
that the callous indifference of the Portuguese Gov- 
ernment to treaty obligations should call for the 

255 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

intervention of governments "more sensible to the 
claims of civilization and Christianity." The great 
English cocoa firm of Cadbury sent out a competent 
and reliable man to investigate the accusations of 
Mr. Nevinson. His report confirmed in every par- 
ticular the story told in Modern Slavery. 

The British Government made representations at 
Lisbon. But, just as at Brussels, English agitation 
was interpreted as due to commercial jealousy. The 
Portuguese resented what they called "unfounded 
accusations"^ and "hypocritical sentimentality." 
Only when Portugal saw that British public senti- 
ment was resulting in a boycott of her cocoa were 
measures taken to reform the heartless methods of 
exploiting natives. The menace to the pocketbook 
and not the appeal to humanity led Lisbon to 
announce in November, 1907, that the adminis- 
tration of the Portuguese colonies would be reformed. 
More than a year passed before anything was done . 

In July, 1909, a royal decree suspended for three 
months recruiting of natives on the Angola mainland 
for island plantations. Sir Edward Grey told the 
British Parliament that Portugal seemed now to give 
proof of an honest intention to correct the abuses. 
Portuguese action was hurried by the news that the 
large cocoa firms of the United States had decided 
(in the summer of 1909) to join British manufactur- 
ers in boycotting Portuguese cocoa. Portugal had 
to take the matter up with the British Antislavery 

^ A Portuguese official investigator reported that the natives 
were "not badly treated," but fifty thousand were being retained 
after the expiration of their "contracts." 

256 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

Society, and assure its officials, by giving them a 
chance to investigate themselves, that the Angola 
slave trade had been stopped. The heavy mortality 
among the laborers in Principe was attributed by the 
Portuguese to sleeping sickness. It was proposed to 
recruit laborers, under proper safeguards, from 
Mozambique, with the promise of repatriation on the 
completion of a two years' contract. 

The Portuguese settled at the mouth of the Congo 
before Columbus discovered America, and have had 
coast settlements from the Congo south to Tiger 
Bay for four hundred years. Portuguese West 
Africa, or Angola, as it is commonly known, is four- 
teen times the size of Portugal, and has a wonderful 
coast Hne with many ports of great value, and rivers 
through all the interior, navigable for long distances 
from the ocean. Its hinterland is a continental 
watershed, containing sources of Congo tributaries 
and the headwaters of the Zambesi. And yet 
although its soil is fertile and its forests rich, the 
colony has never been properly exploited. It still 
imports more than it exports, and costs Portugal 
yearly enormous sums of money, which are only met 
by taking the surplus of the cocoa producing islands 
and increasing the Portuguese national debt. Had 
it not been for the necessity of forming fixed boundary 
lines with Germany, Great Britain, and Belgium, much 
of the interior would still be unexplored. As it is, 
there are portions of Angola of which the Portuguese 
know very little. The tribes of the interior have 
not all accepted Portuguese authority. They have 
necessitated, especially during the period under our 

17 257 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

review (before that they were mostly let alone), 
numerous military expeditions. The hinterland is 
not organized effectively either from the military 
or civil point of view. 

In 1904, native troubles were serious. After two 
hundred and fifty soldiers in outlying posts had been 
massacred, the authorities felt the necessity of send- 
ing out a punitive expedition five thousand strong. 
In 1905, there was a new revolt of considerable extent 
near the German frontier. In 1907, regiments had 
to be sent in a hurry to Angola from Lisbon. In 
1912, there was considerable fighting on the Katanga 
border. In 19 14, the natives of the south and of the 
Congo frontier were once more in rebellion. With all 
these military operations, costing sums that Portugal 
had to borrow at high interest, large portions of the 
interior are not even organized as military districts, 
much less brought under civil administration! 

The Belgians to the north, with their very narrow 
coast Hne, — enjoying only free access to the mouth os 
the river, in fact, — ^have got the trade from the inte- 
rior, which ought to be Portuguese, largely in their 
hands. The Germans on the south, with a colony 
that has no ports and a hinterland not one tenth 
as rich as that of Angola, have covered their posses- 
sion with a network of railways, and made their 
colony self-supporting. When we see what the 
British have done in the hinterland in the creation of 
Rhodesia, we realize how fortunate for the world it 
is that a British ultimatum, twenty-five years ago, 
prevented Portugal from extending her sovereignty 
from one coast colony to the other. Rhodesia, with 

258 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

its rapid economic development and its extensive 
railways, is a reproach to Portugal. 

Unlike Germany and Great Britain, Portugal has 
tried to make her colonies a preserve for herself. 
Her tariff scheme in Angola is calculated in such a 
way that Portuguese ship owners and Portuguese 
merchants will make all the profit out of the exploi- 
tation of the colony. Portuguese products pay only 
ten per cent of the tariff. Other products, dis- 
embarked at Lisbon, and reexported from there to 
Angola, enjoy a reduction of twenty per cent.. Imports 
entering Angola under the Portuguese flag pay only 
half the tariff. The result is, of course, insufficiency 
of shipping facilities for exports, and contraband 
over the Belgian": frontier and a prohibitive price of 
articles coming into the colony from abroad. The 
Portuguese customs lose far more revenue than they 
gain by their tariffs, and the high cost of living pro- 
hibits successful colonization. If Portugal had the 
shipping facilities for developing herself the possibili- 
ties of Angola trade, or if she manufactured in Portu- 
gal articles to sell to her colony, there might be some 
justification for this tariff policy. As it is, Portugal 
cuts off her nose to spite her face. She has huge sums 
to pay to retain possession of the colony at all; colo- 
nists and natives are in a bad economic state; and 
Africa suffers from the maladministration and non- 
productivity of one of its richest areas. 

Formerly, Angola lived from slave traffic. When 
that was stopped, sugar cane was grown to manu- 
facture spirits for native consumption. The Brus- 
sels Act of 1899, in which the European stateg 

259 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

holding African possessions pledged themselves 
to put excessive taxes on alcohol in order to stop 
its use by natives, ruined this industry — if it can be 
called by that name. The Brussels Conference of 
1906 raised the tax by thirty per cent, for a period 
of ten years. Portugal was allowed to retain the old 
tax in Angola, but the industry was already con- 
demned. Nothing has replaced it. 

Cotton is indigenous to Angola. Before the 
development of the rubber boom, it was the great 
industry. It could become so again: for Portugal 
uses nearly half a million pounds of American cotton. ^ 
This could easily be raised in Angola. Laws were 
passed in 1901 and 1906 to encourage the cotton 
industry in the Portuguese colonies. But results 
have not been encouraging. Methods of planting 
and harvesting are primitive; means of transport are 
lacking; the tariff regime discourages colonization and 
foreign capital; and Portugal has no capital herself. 

One can say, however, that Portugal has of recent 
years tried hard to remedy conditions in Angola. 
The trouble is that her handicaps are too great for 
her. She fears that giving out concessions on a 
large scale to foreign concerns will mean the eventual 
loss of the colony. Her own people are ignorant 
and poor. Her Government has no conception of a 
free trade regime. To illustrate the evil of the 
Portuguese protective system, one has only to cite 
the reason for lack of labor. It is not due to lack 
of hands, but to the high price of food to feed the 

^ Eighty thousand families in Portugal are dependent upon cot- 
ton industries and trade. 

260 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

hands and to lack of machinery for development. 
When the freight charges, due to trans-shipment 
at Lisbon or to high Portuguese steamship and rail- 
way rates, or the direct entry duties, are added to the 
original price of everything that is imported, it puts 
the cost of production so high that developing the 
country does not pay. 

There are three lines of railway into the interior at 
the present time, from Loanda, Benguela (Lobita 
Harbor) , and Mossamedes. The Loanda line is owned 
by a private Portuguese company, the Benguela line 
is an English concession, and the Mossamedes line is 
state-owned. The Loanda line has reached about 
half way to the Belgian frontier. The Mossamedes 
line, after ten years, has not progressed much more 
than a hundred miles. The English line from Lobita 
Harbor, which leaves the coast at .Benguela, was 
started in 1902 by a British engineer, who formed a 
company for the purpose of building a trans-conti- 
nental railway to join the line from Beira to Rhode- 
sia. In ten years this line reached Bihe, and at last 
accounts was being rapidly pushed toward the 
Marotseland frontier. It will follow the valley of 
the Lungwebungu River to the Zambesi and then 
down the Zambesi to Victoria Falls, where it will 
meet the Cape to Cairo railway. When this line is 
completed, the mails from the Cape to London will 
save four days, and Rhodesia will be nearer England 
in time than the Commonwealth. A northeastern 
branch to this railway will run from Bihe into the 
Katanga province of the Belgian Congo, opening up 
an enormously rich and still partially unexploited 

261 



THE NEW MAP OP AFRICA 

territory. Although this railway is being financed 
and constructed by British capitalists and engineers, 
there has been some official opposition to it in British 
Government circles, on the ground that it will deflect 
considerable trade from the Cape to subsidized 
Portuguese and German steamship lines. 

The annual deficit of Angola increased rapidly 
before the war, and reached in 191 2 double the 
revenue. In 1913, the situation of the colony was 
desperate. A group of Portuguese banks offered to 
loan eight million dollars to the Government at six 
and a quarter per cent, to be used exclusively for 
railway development in Angola. In the spring 
of 1 9 14, however, the Colonial Minister told Parlia- 
ment that not less than forty million dollars was 
required, and that something must he done immediately 
to demonstrate do the world the ability of Portugal to 
administer and develop this colony.^ He declared 
that the lack of effective administrative control was 
clearly demonstrated by the yield of the hut tax, 
which was only one hundred and forty thousand 
dollars, when it ought to be three million dollars. 
His remedy was incorporated in a project of the law, 
providing for a huge loan to finish the railways, roads, 
and ports; revision of laws concerning land conces- 
sion, native labor, commerce and industry, revision 
of tariffs ; creation of new lines of navigation between 

^ Senor Lisboa e Lima had undoubtedly received official intimation 
of the serious "conversations" going on at that moment between 
Great Britain and Germany. He accepted during the same month, 
without Britain opposing offers of a German syndicate and German 
banks to help in Angola. 

262 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

Europe and the colony, organization of a liberal 
banking and credit system in the colony; new law for 
colonization, to encourage small colonists; and a 
revision of the tariffs of the mother country in every- 
thing that concerns colonial products. Within 
three months came the war. 

Portuguese East Africa was, like Portuguese West 
Africa, a fifteenth-century colony, settled as a 
stopping-place on the way to India. It is fortunate 
in its geographical position. One has only to look at 
the map to see how essential to the British in South 
Africa is the retention of this vast country by a weak 
nation, which can be held under British tutelage. 
For over a thousand miles the western boundary of 
the colony touches the Transvaal and Rhodesia. 
The southern portion of Nyasaland, including the 
whole valley of the Shire, is an enclave in Portuguese 
territory. The Zambesi, from the junction of the 
Loangwa River to its mouth, runs through Portu- 
guese East Africa. The northern part of the colony 
touches the shore of Lake Nyasa. To the port of 
Beira, in the center, runs the railway from Rhodesia 
to the sea. To the port of Lorenzo Marques in the 
south runs the railway from the Transvaal to the sea. 
Were it not for the outlet through friendly Portuguese 
territory, Nyasaland and Rhodesia would be badly 
landlocked. The same can be said of the northern 
portion of the Transvaal. For the mining portion 
of the Transvaal, outlet through Portuguese territory 
is shorter and cheaper than through Natal. To have 
this colony pass into German hands would be a calam- 
ity to British supremacy in South Africa. From the 

263 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

standpoint of France, also, Portugal is a safer neighbor 
than Germany. For Madagascar lies off the coast of 
Portuguese East Africa, and the Comoro Islands are 
in the channel between Madagascar and Mozambique. 

It is difficult to overestimate the importance and 
tremendous possibilities of the territories under 
the Portuguese flag along the Indian Ocean. Moz- 
ambique, in the north, neighbor of German East 
Africa and British Nyasaland, and holding a generous 
coast line on Lake Nyasa, is the territory through 
which the railway from Lake Nyasa to the coast must 
run. Quilimane, just south of Mozambique, will 
some day be as important as Delagoa Bay in the 
south. For it is not only the key to the Shire River 
valley of Nyasaland, but to all the Zambesi valley, 
which runs for a thousand miles in Portuguese 
territory. Sofala Bay, in which is Beira, increases in 
importance as Rhodesia is developed. Delagoa Bay, 
in which is Lorenzo Marques, is the outlet for the 
richest country in Africa. 

To the Commonwealth of South Africa, the posses- 
sion of Delagoa Bay by Portugal is extremely unfortu- 
nate, and has been the cause of internal complications 
for the South Africans. When gold was discovered 
in the Transvaal, Delagoa Bay became the natural 
outlet for the Rand. After the British conquest, 
Natal expected this extremely profitable transit 
trade to be deflected to Durban. This might have 
been possible were it not for the fact that Portugal 
is the Transvaal's neighbor all along the Transvaal's 
eastern frontier. Even were it possible to send 
and receive the Rand and southern Transvaal trade 

264 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

by way of Durban, the haul would be considerably 
longer for the northern Transvaal. Then, too, the 
Rand depends upon the Portuguese colony as a 
recruiting ground for native labor. So the port 
of Lorenzo Marques has prospered wonderfully from 
its transit trade with the Transvaal. 

Over fifty years ago Great Britain tried to claim 
Delagoa Bay, in spite of the fact that the Portuguese 
had been in effective possession since the end of 
the eighteenth century. The British founded their 
claim on the fact that the Portuguese had not 
occupied both sides of the bay and all the islands 
in it. On the south side of the bay and on an island 
the British flag had been planted in 1823 and 1861. 
The question was submitted to arbitration. The 
decision rendered in 1875 was in favor of Portugal. 
Not until after the Boer War did the British realize 
what this award had cost them.^ 

* During the Boer War, however, Great Britain constantly vio- 
lated the neutrality of Portugal in East Africa. Ammunition 
and troops passed from Lorenzo Marques and Beira into the interior 
whenever it was convenient to have them pass that way. The 
British Government declared that Portugal was bound by treaty 
to Britain, and that this gave the right. But Portugal was bound 
also by treaty to the Transvaal, particularly in regard to the very 
Lorenzo-Marques-Pretoria Railway in question. It is the same 
thesis as that used by the Allies to defend the Salonica disembark- 
ment. Greece is the ally of Serbia, etc. But at the same moment 
the Allied Ministers sustained exactly the opposite thesis at Buch- 
arest, when it was a question of German reservists and officers and 
war material passing to Turkey. Still, Rumania was at that moment 
the ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary. All of which goes to 
show that Governments are found by treaties and international law 
only when it is to their interest to evoke treaties and international 
law on their side. 

265 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

In 1888, a railway line, built by a private inter- 
national company, was completed from Lorenzo 
Marques to the Transvaal frontier. It was only 
fifty-five miles long. Taking advantage of the 
technicality that the actual frontier of the Transvaal 
was several miles beyond the terminus of the railway, 
and that the concession was for the construction of 
the railway to the frontier, Portugal confiscated the 
line. After ten years of litigation, the builders of 
the railway were awarded damages that fell consider- 
ably short of their claims. There were rumors 
current that Great Britain and Germany were going 
to divide Portuguese East Africa in return for 
advancing the indemnity Portugal was condemned to 
pay. Upon this the Transvaal Government offered 
to loan Portugal the money. But Portugal found 
the amount of the award in a disinterested quarter, 
and saved what has become her most valuable bit of 
territory. 

When the British became masters of the Transvaal, 
Lord Miiner confirmed, as a modus vivendi, the former 
treaties of the Transvaal with Portugal for transit 
trade through Lorenzo Marques. Immediately after 
peace was reestablished, the rivalry became acute 
between Cape Town, Durban, and Lorenzo Marques 
for the Transvaal carrying trade. The story of this 
competition, which ended in the treaty of April i, 
1909, between Transvaal and Portugal, is told else- 
where.^ Its importance to Portugal is the fact 
that it assured to Lorenzo Marques a minimum of 
fifty per cent of Transvaal trade for ten years, and 

' See above, pp. 78-82 

266 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

thus establishes for Portuguese East Africa a large 
revenue from the fact of the lucky position of this 
port. It is not probable, however, that if Lorenzo 
Marques remains Portuguese territory, it will con- 
tinue to be able to exact a lucrative toll without 
giving more in return than is given now. There 
is reason to believe that the South African Common- 
wealth will make every effort to bring Delagoa Bay 
and Lorenzo Marques under the British flag with 
the peace settlement of the European War. 

In 1907, autonomous government on the repre- 
sentative system was granted by Portugal to the 
Lorenzo Marques district. In 19 10, on the strength 
of the Transvaal Treaty, Lorenzo Marques secured a 
loan of four million dollars to construct coal depots 
and stone quays, dredge the channel, and renew 
the rolling stock of the railway. 

The problem of Portuguese East Africa is different 
in every particular from that of Angola. Angola is a 
colony whose prosperity and economic development 
depend entirely upon the way it is administered. 
Its five thousand square miles of Africa, held by a 
nation that has neither the ability nor the money 
to make its possession worth while, remain stagnant 
— ^but without serious consequences to any one except 
the owners. Portuguese East Africa, on the other 
hand, must be opened up and pacified and devel- 
oped, in spite of the hopeless maladministration of 
the Portuguese. It is too far away, also, from 
Portugal to suffer, as Angola is suffering, from 
the policy of preferential tariffs. Portugal simply 
cannot assume to trade with her East African colony 

267 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

as she trades with her West African colonies, ^ The 
imperative necessities of Nyasaland, Rhodesia, and 
the Transvaal have made Chinde, Beira, and Lorenzo 
Marques open ports for through trade, and have 
led to the establishment of bonded warehouses 
under foreign control. Thanks only to the develop- 
ment of the interor by Great Britain, the Portu- 
guese have succeeded in extracting sufficient toll 
from transit trade to balance the budget of this 
colony. 

Nor has Portugal been allowed to say in East 
Africa, as in Angola and Guinea: "If we are unable 
to take advantage of our colony, that is our affair. 
We shall keep others out." The fear of being 
forcibly dispossessed compelled the Portuguese to 
make tolerable conditions of transit trade at the 
ports, the proper running of railways, and the main- 
tenance of suitable transport facilities on the Zam- 
besi. Covetous neighbors have been kept from 
encroaching politically by the farming out of large 

^ In spite of the monthly P. and O. and Messageries Maritimes 
services, the Germans enjoyed almost the monopoly of foreign trade. 
For a while the British gave up the north bound regular sailing. 
The rates of the Deutsch Ost Afrika Linie to Hamburg were less 
than the French rate to Marseilles. The same conditions prevailed 
even in the British Indian Ocean ports. German goods for Portu- 
guese territory, and for transit into the Commonwealth and Rhodesia 
as well, were rapidly supplanting English goods. Colonists as well 
as natives preferred German goods, not so much for the reason that is 
so frequently given by English and French writers, i.e., cheaper price 
for shoddy goods, as for their suitability. The Germans put on the 
market everywhere in the world what they knew, from studying 
local conditions, customers wanted — ^not what they thought cus- 
tomers ought to buy, 

268 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

portions of the colony to foreign capitalists, After 
the scare of the British "big stick" in the hinter- 
land question, it was believed that if subjects of the 
"Great Powers" were given concessions on a liberal 
scale, such as Rhodes and his associates enjoyed 
in the interior, powerful capitalists might find it to 
their interest to champion the maintenance of the 
colony under the Portuguese flag, and Lisbon would 
have an unanswerable argument to the accusation 
that the country was not being developed. Char- 
tered companies, also, would enable Portugal to 
collect a revenue without investing any money and 
doing any work. 

It is impossible in the limits of this book to go into 
the history of the chartered companies. The most 
important are the Mozambique, Nyasa, and Zambesi 
companies, which were formed in 1891, 1892, and 
1894. Their twenty-five-year concessions are just 
drawing to a close. To these companies Portugal 
gave practically complete sovereignty, in return for 
seven and a half per cent, of their revenue. The 
companies have had to build the railways and tele- 
graph lines wholly at their own expense. They have 
enjoyed the right of giving sub-concessions. What 
agricultural and mining development has taken place 
in Portuguese East Africa is due to these companies. 
The Mozambique Company founded Beira, built the 
railway to Rhodesia, and has developed the port. 
The Zambesi Company is building the railway from 
Quilimane to Shire, and manages the Zambesi River 
transport through a sub-concession. 

None of the chartered companies, in spite of their 
269 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

possibilities, have succeeded well under Portuguese 
rule. There are too many discouragements, and 
too many disagreements with Lisbon. Shares soon 
became a speculation. For several years there has 
been a movement on foot to suppress the charters 
entirely or to make radical changes. Certainly a 
completely new system of government will have to 
be arranged for Portuguese East Africa. To the 
prosperous and growing hinterland a continuation of 
the present regime is intolerable. 

In 191 1, the shooting of a British missionary by a 
Portuguese ofBcial on the Nyasaland frontier led to 
a diplomatic incident with Great Britain that shows 
how Portuguese colonial administration was viewed 
in England just before the war. The shooting was 
established by the evidence of competent witnesses 
to have been wholly unprovoked. It took a year to 
bring the official to trial and then he was sentenced 
to one yearns imprisonment. The trial was a farce. 
In remonstrating, the British Foreign Office demand- 
ed that this man be not reemployed in a responsible 
position. The note stated that the tragedy was the 
result of having an uneducated soldier, totally unfitted 
for his place, in a government post. Portugal was 
told plainly that Great Britain could not let this 
incident pass without declaring that in the future 
only properly qualified officials must be appointed 
to posts in which they would have to deal with 
British interests of serious importance. 

In going over the statistics of Portuguese East 
Africa for the decade before 1914, one is struck with 
the fact that the Portuguese revenues are practically 

270 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

wholly parasitical, due to the lucky accident of 
geographical position. The British pay for the use 
of ports and railways. The Germans pay for the 
privilege of running Zambesi River steamers and for 
carrying the export and import and coastal trade. 
The natives find work in the Transvaal. From fifty 
to sixty thousand go yearly to the mines in British 
territory, and carry back to spend in Portuguese 
territory three to four million dollars a year. The 
chartered companies pay for the privilege of existing 
imder an obnoxious regime. I wish I could find 
something encouraging and kind to say about Portu- 
guese colonial administration.^ There is nothing 
in the facts but ground for destructive criticism. 
This is the only chapter in my book where I cannot 
do what I like always to do — find the bright spots 
and bring them out strongly. 

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, 
with the exception of one year, Portugal has had 
to increase her national debt to meet a serious 
budget deficit. The balance of trade is also increas- 
ing against Portugal. The last available statistics 
before the war showed imports considerably more 
than twice the value of exports. Only Turkey of all 
the European states is so hopelessly in debt. But 
Turkey's debt is not larger than Portugal's: and 
Portugal has a quarter of Turkey's population and 

^ The Portuguese themselves have evidently passed adverse 
judgment on their colonial administration. For in Africa more 
Portuguese live outside of Portuguese rule than under it. There 
are many more Portuguese in the American colony of Hawaii, on 
the other side of the world from Portugal, than in all the Portuguese 
colonies put together. 

271 



THE NEW MAP OP AFRICA 

not a tithe of Turkey's resources. Portugal's debt, 
in fact, is nearly as large as that of the United 
States and bears more interest. Half of Portugal 
is uncultivated, only two per cent, of her area wooded, 
her merchant marine smaller than that of any nation 
with an ocean coast except China, and her navy 
smaller than that of any nation except Norway. 
Between seventy and eighty per cent of her popula- 
tion is illiterate. 

In every nation an anti-colonial policy has been 
adopted by advanced radicals. European govern- 
ments have had the same experience as that of the 
United States. The Socialists of Germany, Belgium, 
Italy, France, and Spain, and the Labor Party of 
Great Britain, have been untiring in their criticism 
of colonial administration and their opposition to 
colonial budgets and colonial military expeditions. 
Radicals are almost always anti-imperialists. Portu- 
gal has been no exception to the general rule. Her 
radicals have found the armor of their government 
much the easiest in the world to pierce. To under- 
stand the internal history of Portugal, and her 
colonial policy since the accession of the ill-fated 
Dom Carlos, it is essential to keep constantly in 
mind the struggle of Republican elements against 
the dynasty. The Republican party has always 
used the colonial question to attack the monarchy. 
One moment the Republicans would be the cham- 
pions of Portuguese pride against Great Britain and 
Germany, and the next the defenders of Portuguese 
taxpayers against the Colonial Minister's demands 
upon the budget. 

272 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

The assassination of Carlos and his heir in 1908, 
followed by the expulsion of Manoel in 19 10, brought 
the problem of the Portuguese colonies once more 
before the world as a question of far-reaching inter- 
national importance. During the four years between, 
the birth of the Republic and the beginning of the 
European War, there were constant rumors of the 
intention of Portugal to sell her colonies to Ger- 
many. Discerning readers could see in the way 
these reports were commented upon a clear indi- 
cation of how Great Britain and Germany were 
drifting towards war. 

The unwillingness of the British to execute the 
Chamberlain Treaty of 1898 or to allow Germany 
to deal directly with Portugal in this question was a 
sure sign of their determination not to allow Germany 
to establish naval stations and coaling bases that 
might jeopardize Britain's maritime supremacy. 
The articles of Blatchford and the general campaign 
of alarm against Germany in the British press were 
indicative of this determination. There were many 
liberals in Great Britain and Germany who deter- 
mined that the two nations should not be allowed to 
drift into war. They tried their best to bring about 
an understanding between the governments on the 
naval program and other points at issue. Among 
the important questions that came up in these 
informal and semi-official pourparlers was the prob- 
lem of the Portuguese colonies. 

Shortly before the outbreak of the war, it was the 
belief in Portugal that the two great rivals had come 
to a new understanding. This time, Germany was 
18 273 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

to have all of Angola, and was to give up in re- 
turn to Great Britain privileges that her subjects had 
acquired in Mozambique. So persistent were these 
rumors that they were noticed editorially in the 
London press. The Times declared that there was 
nothing in the new Anglo-German accord to diminish 
the value of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, and no 
intention to despoil Portugal, either by purchase or 
any other means, of any of her colonies. An im- 
portant German newspaper at the same time, speak- 
ing of the law for the development of Angola, just 
presented to the Portuguese Parliament by the Colo- 
nial Minister, said: "These plans seem to us deserv- 
ing of commendation. The exposition of the Minister 
of Colonies is characterised by undoubted sincerity, 
and his project of law seems to be well worked out in 
all its details. " ^ 

Three days after Great Britain joined France 
and Russia against Germany, Premier Machado 
stated that Portugal could not disregard the duty 
of her alliance with England, and the Lisbon Parlia- 
ment declared that Portugal was on the side of the 
Allies "as much as is necessary and up to what- 
ever point is necessary.*' But for nearly eighteen 
months there was no certain indication that Portugal 
intended to embroil herself with Germany. The 
people certainly wanted to fight, especially after 
an actual state of war had arisen in Angola, where 
German and Portuguese soldiers came into frontier 
conflict. It is not easy at the present writing to 

' See leaders in London Times, May 28, 19 14, and Kolnische 
Zeitung, May 22, 19 14. 

274 



PROBLEM OF PORTUGUESE COLONIES 

give a clear idea of what has happened in Portugal 
during these past two years. According to the 
sympathies of the man to whom you talk or the 
newspaper you read, is the information given to you. 
As far as I can gather, the question of intervention 
or non-intervention in Portugal was the old question 
of Republic or Monarchy. The Germanophiles 
and anti-war partisans were monarchists. The 
Government got into the hands of the reactionaries. 
Although troops were sent to Africa to fight the 
Germans, and although the Portuguese. Cabinet 
received from Parliament on November 23, 19 14, 
full power to declare war upon Germany, Baron von 
Rosen, the German Minister at Lisbon, seemed to 
retain great power. Parliament was closed by armed 
force, municipal councils dissolved, and functionaries 
of the old regime reappointed to prefectures and sub- 
prefectures. It required what was virtually a second 
revolution to maintain the Republic. 

When Germany declared war on Portugal in the 
spring of 191 6, a new situation was not established 
in Africa, where the Portuguese had long been in 
open conflict with the Germans. But it made easier 
the final stages of the conquest of German East 
Africa. 

Portugal's alliance with Great Britain and France 
may save her colonies for a while. But they cer- 
tainly will not be retained permanently, unless, 
with French and British help, they are properly 
developed. The parable of the Ten Talents works 
in colonies as well as in everything else. 



275 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

THERE are four British colonies in West Africa. 
On the extreme western coast of the continent, 
Gambia, extending back for several hundred 
miles along the banks of the Gambia River, is a 
narrow enclave in French territory, just south of 
Senegal. Sierra Leone has a considerable extent of 
coast line, but not much hinterland, south and west 
of French Guinea, and west and north of Liberia. 
Farther east, on the north littoral of the Gulf of 
Guinea, the Gold Coast Colony parallels German 
Togoland, and is, together with Togoland, an enclave 
in French territory between the Ivory Coast and 
Dahomey. The northern frontier of the Ivory Coast 
Colony is an arbitrary line, which marks equally the 
northern confines of Togoland. But the Gold Coast 
is almost twice as wide as Togoland, and has a very 
much more extended coast line. In fact, as elsewhere 
in Africa, the Germans are shut off from a logical 
and natural portion of their coast line by a projection 
of British territory. Nigeria is much larger than the 
other three colonies put together. It has a very 
important portion of the coast line on the Gulf of 
Guinea, just west of the bend, and contains the lower 
valley of the Niger River, with its delta, and the 

276 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

outlet of Benue River, which, with all its tributaries 
except one, has its source in German Kamerun. The 
northern boundary of Nigeria extends nearly to 14° 
N., and has most of the western border of Lake 
Chad. Its southern and eastern neighbor is 
Kamerun. Nigeria projects into the German colony 
far enough to control Yola at the confluence of the 
rivers which form the Benue. 

All four of these possessions are protectorates in 
the hinterland and Crown Colonies on the coast. 
The latter two have been formed gradually by the 
same process of penetration as in East Africa, and 
are still in the process of transition. Just as in 
British East Africa, the Government has been 
changed — or rather organized and consolidated — dur- 
ing the period of our survey. 

Gambia and Sierra Leone are extensions of the 
old British West African settlements of Bathurst on 
the Island of St. Mary and of Freetown. Both 
colonies are extremely interesting as examples of pros- 
perity that has come during the past fifteen years, 
and of the unadulterated profit that England enjoys 
from the possession of bits of territory like these 
scattered all over the world. In Gambia, trade 
doubled from 1906 to 1912, and reached over £2,000,- 
000 in 1 91 3. Forty per cent, of the imports were 
English goods from Liverpool. The surplus of 
revenue over expenditure was nearly £30,000, and 
the whole country was kept in order by one hundred 
and twenty-five soldiers and native policemen. 
The colony has no debts, and is no expense whatever 
to the mother country. 

277 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

In Sierra Leone revenue has exceeded expenditure 
since 1905, and trade almost doubled between 1908 
and 1 91 3, passing in the latter year £3,000,000. 
Two-thirds of the imports were furnished by England, 
and two-thirds of the total trade was carried on 
British ships. A narrow gauge railway, owned by the 
Government, runs directly across the colony from 
Freetown to the Liberian frontier, and another line 
is being constructed through the northern portion of 
the colony to the French frontier. Freetown is a 
fortified coaling station. 

Two matters of general interest in the history of 
European colonization stand out during the past 
fifteen years in Sierra Leone. In the hinterland, when 
the Protectorate was organized administratively, 
nine-tenths of its revenue came from the imposition 
of a hut tax. The natives protested against this, 
and it was exceedingly difficult to make them under- 
stand the reason for it. There were many revolts, 
and in some cases tribal chiefs, who assisted the 
authorities in its collection, were killed or driven into 
exile. Some Europeans took the side of the natives, 
and claimed that the prosperity of the colony was 
steadily declining because of the persistence in exact- 
ing this tax. But in an uncivilized country, where 
import duties are negligible and where the Govern- 
ment can hardly adopt the former customs of warlike 
tribes to collect a tax on through trade, seeing that 
they went into the country on the pretext of destroy- 
ing this very practice, how can expenses be met dur- 
ing the years of economic development in any other 
way than by a head tax or a hut tax? Until protec- 

278 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

torates are fully organized, the hut tax is by far the 
more feasible. Homes can be located, their number 
estabUshed, and difHculties of identity avoided — 
especially where a population is migratory or can 
easily become so to avoid taxation. By quiet and 
steady persistence, the Sierra Leone authorities were 
able to report in 191 3 that there was trouble over the 
hut tax collection in only one district. 

■ The second matter is the fight against secret can- 
nibalistic societies, whose practices are repugnant to 
European ideas of humanity and justice. As British 
control spread to the interior, it was the policy to 
continue to keep order and to administer justice, as 
well as to collect taxes, through native chiefs and in 

* accordance with native laws. But where an organ- 
ization known as the ' ' Human Leopards ' ' was hold- 
ing secret meetings, with a ritual demanding the 
sacrifice of boys and girls, followed by a cannibalistic 
feast, the authorities felt compelled to intervene, and 
declare that such practices would be treated as 
murder. In 1905, there were twenty-eight murder 
convictions for the crimes of this organization. 
After eight years of unremitting effort, the authorities 
reported that they had not yet succeeded in getting 
the better of the "Human Leopards. " In 1913, over 
three hundred persons, including several paramount 
and tribal chiefs, were arrested, and a special court 
was set up to try them. It was exceedingly difficult 
to get evidence even from the relatives of the victims. 
Only twenty-four could be brought to trial, and nine 
convictions for murder were secured. There were 
seven executions. 

279 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Organizations like the "Human Leopards" furnish 
one of the most perplexing problems of the European 
administrator in the interior of Africa. They have 
probably existed for centuries, are ingrained in the 
character and habits of the people, and are believed 
to be a medicinal and spiritual necessity. Aside 
from officials, there are probably less than fifty 
Europeans in the protectorate portion of Sierra 
Leone among a native population of nearly a million 
and a half. It is open to question whether one can 
compel the natives to adopt a European attitude 
toward practices that are repugnant to our nature, 
until, living among them and revealing to them our 
civilization by example as well as by word, we make 
these practices repugnant to their nature. 

In regard to both of these problems, which are 
found in the recent history of other protectorates 
besides Sierra Leone — every protectorate, in fact, 
that claims sway over the interior of the African 
continent — the reader may ask whether it is logical 
and just to force an alien Government and alien 
standards upon the natives against their will, com- 
pel them to pay taxes to support what they do not 
want and hate, and punish them when they violate 
an ethical code which is peculiarly ours and of which 
they have no conception. This question comes up 
everywhere in the pages of recent African history. 
The answer is very simple, much more simple than it 
seems on the face of it. We ask the question only be- 
cause Africa to-day affords the example of transition 
that long ago took place in Europe and more recently 
in America. In Africa we see with our own eyes and 

280 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

in our own day the working out of the inevitable law 
of the imposition of the superior civilization upon the 
inferior civilization. It is the triumph of mind over 
matter, of knowledge over ignorance. The survival 
of the fittest is a spiritual rather than a physical test. 
We cannot get away from the white man's burden. 
The impulse to make others like oneself has always 
been as strong in the human race as the impulse to 
propagate the species. 

The man who opposes and ridicules and deprecates 
missionary effort is logical only if he is sincerely 
willing to have himself,, his family, and his country, 
lapse back into the period when his ancestors walked 
through the forests of Germany with untanned skins 
hanging from their necks and clubs in their hands, 
looking for men from the next village to kill. By the 
same token, the Government official, who is grap- 
pling with problems of civilizing natives under his 
charge, is logical, when he condemns missionary effort, 
only if he denies that Christian influence has created 
the institutions he is trying, by purely secular means, 
to force the savages to understand and accept. 
Education alone will civilize Africa. The spread of 
commerce and the opening up of trade routes alone 
will make workable and permanent European 
institutions in Africa. Education is possible only 
through missionary agencies, and the whole history 
of Europe extending outside of Europe teaches that 
the flag follows the cross. 

Is it not significant that in Sierra Leone, as well as 
in the neighboring republic of Liberia, the substitu- 
tion of Islam for paganism — so marked in the last 

281 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

decade — has done more to check the evil of drink, 
to turn the natives away from cannibaHsm and to 
reconcile them to the necessity of submitting to a 
central constituted authority than all the efforts of 
French, British, and German military and civil 
officials? How much more could Christianity do? 

The littoral between the French Ivory Coast and 
German Togoland, for 350 miles along the Gulf of 
Guinea, is known as the Gold Coast Colony. Accra, 
the capital, has nearly twenty thousand inhabitants. 
From Secondee to Coomassie, the capital of Ashanti, 
170 miles in the interior, there is a railway, which 
cost £2,500,000. Two other small lines, in the 
eastern part of the colony, will in time reach the upper 
valley of the Volta River, the boundary line between 
Togoland and the Gold Coast. In the hinterland of 
the Gold Coast are Ashanti and the Northern Terri- 
tories. 

The Kingdom of Ashanti was a very recent British 
Protectorate at the beginning of the twentieth cen- 
tury and its wealth in gold mines and forests was just 
beginning to be realized. In 1900, a new governor 
of the Gold Coast, Sir Frederick Hodgson, visiting 
Coomassie, heard that the Ashanti had a golden stool 
or throne. He sent the police to find it. The Ash- 
antis had long been wanting to rebel against British 
authority, and reinstate their King. This gave an 
excellent reason for an outbreak. The Ashantis 
invested Coomassie, and for several months it was 
believed that the garrison, who were defending the 
Governor and Lady Hodgson, would succumb before 
help reached them. The official party, with a por- 

282 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

tion of the garrison, managed to break through the 
besieging forces after several months, and arrived at 
Accra nearly starving only a few days before Coo- 
massie was finally relieved. The folly of Sir Freder- 
ick Hodgson compelled the British to undertake a 
regular war against the Ashantis, which, after a 
summer campaign, ended, as all native wars must 
end, in a decisive victory and annexation. Ashanti 
became British territory by Orders in Council of 
September 26, 1901, and has since been governed by 
the administration of the Gold Coast Colony. 

When Ashanti was annexed, another farther bit of 
the hinterland was placed under British protection, 
and frontiers arranged with Germany and France. 
This is known as the Northern Territories, and is 
governed by a Commissioner at Tamali, subordinate 
to the Governor of the Gold Coast. There are many 
Mohammedans in the Northern Territories. It is 
believed that valuable gold mines may be developed 
when railway communications are established 
through the valley of the White Volta. 

The annexation of Ashanti was the beginning of a 
new era for the Gold Coast. It gave impetus to the 
railway construction to Coomassie, which was imper- 
ative for permanent pacification. The railway, in 
turn, stimulated the gold industry, which grew in the 
ten years from 1903 to 191 3 from £100,000 to over 
£2,000,000. The Ashanti War cost £400,000, which 
was imposed upon the Ashantis as a debt. It in- 
volved the British Government in 1904 in the ex- 
penditure, also, of nearly £300,000 in the Northern 
Territories. 

283 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Like Gambia and Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast is 
proving a valuable market for British trade. Liver- 
pool supplies a substantial part of the imports. 
Sixty per cent, of the carrying trade is under the 
British flag. Trade doubled between 1906 and 191 2, 
and jumped ten per cent, over the figures of 1912 
during the year before the European War. Year 
after year the surplus of revenue over expenditure 
increased until it reached £200,000 in 1912. In 1913, 
the large accumulated surpluses were spent in har- 
bor works, water works, and sanitation, and new 
railway lines were planned to the cocoa districts. 
In the Northern Territories, however, it was es- 
timated in 1 914 that many decades would be required 
before that part of the Gold Coast paid its way. 

As its name implies, this region attracted Euro- 
peans for its mining wealth. But gold has been 
exported since the fifteenth century, and the mines, 
under present conditions of intensive development 
and large production, cannot be considered as a 
permanent source of wealth. The British have been 
experimenting in the Gold Coast and Ashanti, as in 
almost every other African colony, in cotton growing. 
The British Cotton Growing Association sent experts 
throughout Africa in 1903 to stimulate a movement 
that they hoped would in time make Manchester 
wholly independent of American cotton. Although 
the Ashanti chiefs were reported to be interested, and 
were started in cotton growing, the propaganda 
cannot be said to have succeeded in this part of 
Africa. Gold still holds the premier place in Ashanti 
exports, and is surpassed in the Gold Coast only by 

284 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

cocoa, which is being grown on enormous and con- 
stantly enlarged plantations. 

British efforts in the Gold Coast have been stimu- 
lated by French and German activities around the 
colony. The remarkable development in gold min- 
ing, which has paid railway expenses and enabled the 
colony to accumulate a surplus, has been very fortu- 
nate for those who have been working along lines of 
agricultural development. But sanitary conditions 
have never been satisfactory, and the mortality 
among officials and other Europeans is exceedingly 
high. The possibilities of the country are unlimited, 
if only it can be made habitable for Europeans on a 
large scale. At present there are less than two thou- 
sand Europeans in the colony, and very few indeed, 
outside of officials and missionaries, in Ashanti and 
the Northern Territories. 

Little Togoland was easily conquered in the first 
month of the war by the Gold Coast forces, cooper- 
ating with the French. The Gold Coast Legislative 
Council, enthusiastically hopeful of keeping per- 
manently the German colony whose wonderful devel- 
opment is sketched elsewhere in this book, offered to 
pay the total expenses of the conquest, and to con- 
tribute £80,000 to the general war expenses of the 
British Empire during 191 6. If Togoland remains in 
British possession, the Gold Coast will have not only 
the entire valley of the Volta River, but will gain 
possession of the thriving port of Lome, just beyond 
their coast line, and the two railways leading back 
into the interior of Togo. Hope is expressed in 
British Imperialist circles, not only that Togoland 

285 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

will remain British, but also that France, by receiving 
compensation elsewhere, will be willing to cede 
Dahomey and Bordu to Great Britain. If Nigeria 
keeps Kamerun, and the hopes of ousting the French 
from Dahomey be realized, Great Britain will be 
master of the whole of the Gulf of Guinea coast line, 
and British West Africa will become a colonial pos- 
session second to none in Africa. 

Nigeria, whose interest and importance to the 
British Empire has been realized only now that the 
dreams of the future include the German Kamerun, 
is largely a product of the twentieth century. The 
British flag first appeared in what has grown to be 
Nigeria, in the little kingdom of Lagos, which was 
"bought" from a native King more than fifty years 
ago, after France had begun to extend her influence 
over the neighboring kingdom of Dahomey. It 
belonged first to Sierra Leone, and then to the Gold 
Coast, but was made a separate colony in 1886, after 
the Germans had got a foothold in Togo and Kam- 
erun. Lagos was the nucleus from which the great 
territory of Nigeria has been built. If one glances 
at the map, it will be seen that the hinterland of this 
territory reaches the Niger at its second bend. Im- 
mediately after the colony and Protectorate of Lagos 
was constituted, the National African Company, 
which had prevented the Germans from getting the 
delta and the lower valley of the Niger, obtained a 
charter from the British Government under the name 
of the Royal Niger Company. The charter was sur- 
rendered in 1899, and the two Protectorates of North- 
ern and Southern Nigeria were formed of its territories 

286 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

on January i, 1900. Southern Nigeria absorbed 
two smaller Protectorates, one of which was the 
"Oil Rivers," hurriedly constituted in 1885 to pre- 
vent Germany from approaching the mouth of the 
Niger. In 1906, Lagos was incorporated in Southern 
Nigeria, and on January i, 19 14, Northern Nigeria 
was taken in, and the whole Niger valley territory 
organized as a colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. ^ 
There is a governor-general, an executive council, 
which acts for the Protectorate as well as for the 
colony, and an advisory council with neither legisla- 
tive nor executive authority. 

The population of Nigeria is probably twenty 
millions, and its area is nearly three times that of the 
United Kingdom. Most of the inhabitants of the 
Hausa States in the northern Protectorate are Mo- 
hammedans, and the Islamic propaganda has made 
rapid strides south along the valley of the Niger. 
Lake Chad is at the northeastern end of Nigeria. 
The caravan routes across the desert lead to Tripoli, 
by which access to the Mediterranean is very much 
shorter than through Algeria. So Nigeria has been 
extremely interested in the development of French 
and Italian influence in North Africa, in the decline 
of Ottoman power, and in the Pan-Islamic movement. 
In regard to slavery, the same policy of gradual eman- 
cipation has been adopted as in Zanzibar, and the 

' A special silver coinage for all the West African colonies was intro- 
duced shortly before the Nigerian unification. In size, weight, and 
value the coins correspond to those of the United Kingdom. The 
reserves to guarantee the coinage are deposited in London, under the 
control of the West African Currency Board. 

287 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

results of fifteen years demonstrate the value of this 
policy in doing away with slave-dealing, if not with 
slavery, among Moslem tribes, who are under Arab 
and Moslem influence and who have fashioned their 
social institutions and customs and laws by Moham- 
medan precept and example. 

Lagos, before the amalgamation of 1906, was grow- 
ing in the same rapid way as Sierra Leone and Gam- 
bia. In 1905 there was an excess of revenue over 
expenditure of £30,000. Lagos is another illustra- 
tion of the profit British manufacturers and mer- 
chants and shippers derive from colonies. For Lagos 
in 1905 took over seventy-five per cent, of her imports 
from Great Britain. The Colonial Loans' Act of 
1899 enabled Lagos to secure the money for a railway 
into the interior, which has since been extended to 
Jebba on the second bend of the Niger River, and 
connects there by ferry with the line from Kano to 
the Niger. 

The 1905 report of Lagos admitted that much 
of the revenue was derived from spirits duties, but 
declared that the importation of spirits could not be 
prohibited without seriously dislocating the finances 
of the colony. The growing sentiment against 
alcohol in Great Britain, and the belief that African 
natives were being demoralized by rum, led to agita- 
tion in Evangelical Church circles and among Non- 
conformists. Missionary reports and speeches of 
missionaries home on furlough did much to deepen 
the conviction that an enlightened Christian nation 
should not abolish slavery and introduce civilization 
in Africa only to demoralize the freedmen with the 

288 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

curse of Anglo-Saxondom. After the coining of the 
Liberal Government to power in the General Elec- 
tion of 1906, a victory won by Nonconformist votes, 
political pressure was brought upon the Colonial 
Office to investigate the liquor traffic in West Africa. 
In December, 1908, a committee was appointed to 
go to Nigeria for this purpose. 

The findings of the committee were very different 
from the representations of some travelers and all 
missionaries. The committee reported that in 
Southern Nigeria spirits furnished twenty-two per 
cent, of the total imports and provided fifty per cent, 
of the revenue. Rum paid two hundred per cent, 
and gin three hundred per cent. duty. But the 
merchants engaged in liquor importation were almost 
exclusively Dutch and German, and the spirits came 
chiefly from Rotterdam and Hamburg. The Com- 
mission stated that the standard of sobriety in 
Southern Nigeria was much higher than in Great 
Britain, and concluded that "there is absolutely no 
evidence of race deterioration due to drink . . . 
hardly any alcoholic disease among the native popu- 
lation, and with the exception of one or two isolated 
cases, we found no connection between crime and 
drink." But the agitation continued. The Colonial 
Secretary was asked to extend the Sierra Leone sys- 
tem of local option throughout the West African 
Colonies, and to make illegal the use of gin as cur- 
rency and the practice of pawning children for gin. 
He gave a non-committal reply. 

It is extremely difficult to come to a definite con- 
clusion on this subject, of which one hears and reads 
19 289 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

so much. On the one hand, it is easy to believe that 
those who are anxious to preserve the equilibrium 
of budgets are very greatly, if unconsciously, influ- 
enced in their attitude toward a question of this kind 
by their desire not. to lose. a vital item of revenue. 
On the other hand, it must be remembered that the 
missionaries consider drinking a sin, wholly repre- 
hensible in itself, and are apt to exaggerate — un- 
consciously also — the evil effects of a practice they 
condemn on principle. 

The conquest of the hinterland of Nigeria occupied 
a period of five years, from 1901 to 1906, and is one 
of the most remarkable feats ever accomplished by a 
British colonial administrator. Sir Frederick Lugard 
not only had to work with inadequate military and 
civil establishments and with grants far below his 
needs, but he was also hampered by the same laissez 
aller policy of the Home Government which rendered 
the situation in Somaliland so difficult during the 
same period. If he had depended upon guidance 
and advice from London, and had not possessed 
initiative to an extraordinary degree, France and 
Germany might have cut the British off from Lake 
Chad, occupied the Yola Province on the River Benue, 
and anticipated the British in establishing a pro- 
tectorate over the Hausa .States.^ On the other 
hand, the task of extending British sovereignty over 
the hinterland received powerful support from Im- 
perialists and from local sentiment in the Lagos 

' A portion of the area, potentially British through the enterprise 
of Sir Frederick and his associates, was sacrificed by the compensa- 
tions to France in the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904. 

290 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

and Southern Nigeria colonies. France and Great 
Britain were bitter rivals, and Germany was begin- 
ning to develop the neighboring Kamerun in what 
was, from the British Imperialist point of view, "an 
alarming manner. " 

Nigeria had to lend troops to the Gold Coast for 
the relief of Coomassie and the subsequent Ashanti 
campaign. As soon as they came back, a vigorous 
forward policy was decided upon. For France was 
still smarting from the humiliation of the Fashoda 
affair, and determined to make as much as possible 
out of her paramount position in the Upper Niger 
Valley and in the eastern Sahara and Sudan. Her 
aim was to have Lake Chad wholly French and to 
limit by anticipation the British and German pene- 
tration north and northeast from the Gulf of Guinea. 
Against the British, the French plan was to get con- 
trol of the valley of the Sokoto River from the border 
of the desert to its junction with the Niger, and also 
to control the whole basin of the Komadugu Waube 
running along the southern edge of the desert east- 
ward into Lake Chad. They entered what the 
British claimed was their "sphere" and nearly pre- 
cipitated a second Fashoda crisis by killing an 
English officer. But at the same time, the troops 
who had come back from Ashanti overthrew the 
Emirs of Kontagoro and Beda, two of the most 
powerful feudatories of the Sokoto Empire. During 
the autumn of 1901, the province of Yola, in the 
Upper Benue Valley, which the Germans coveted, 
was brought under administrative control, and a 
resident placed at Yola. 

291 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

In 1902 the diplomacy that foreshadowed the 
Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 was initiated. It 
was decided to make a delimitation of French and 
British spheres south of the Sahara, to determine the 
Lake Chad boundaries, and to modify — or rather to 
make more precise — the Convention of 1899 in 
regard to the Sudan spheres of influence. As the 
French were claiming a frontier from the Niger to 
Lake Chad, which would give them access to the 
Benue River, thus shutting the British- off entirely 
from Lake Chad, the Nigerian officials sought to 
make effective their occupation of this region. 
Their success depended upon the acceptance by the 
Emir of Kano of the British Protectorate that Sir 
Frederick asserted his predecessor had agreed to. 
The Emir proved recalcitrant and refused the bribes 
of British agents. Sir Frederick announced that 
the only possible policy for the future of Nigeria was 
to include in the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria 
the entire territories of the Hausa States. In spite 
of the lukewarmness of the Colonial Office, he pre- 
cipitated a conflict with the Emir of Kano and other 
Sokoto vassals in 1903. Sokoto was occupied on 
March 15th, and, after much difficulty and one seri- 
ous reverse, the Emir of Kano was tracked and 
killed in June. Less than one thousand men were 
at Sir Frederick Lugard's disposal, but with them he 
was able to include the entire Sultanate of Sokoto in 
Nigeria, and to bring the British sphere up to the edge 
of the Sahara. 

The Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 compounded 
the rivalry with France. But there was still much 

292 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

work to be done to pacify the territories left to the 
British. For several years after Lugard's resigna- 
tion, there was much fighting. Emirs who proved 
refractory were killed or deposed. On the Anglo- 
German frontier, Germans and British combined to 
subdue the resistance of remote tribes, and in the 
north those who resisted the European penetration 
were caught and crushed between British and French. 
After the Europeans came to an understanding, 
.resistance on the part of the Africans was hopeless. 
The railway from the Niger was pushed on to 
Kano. The British worked in the organization of 
Northern Nigeria through the local emirs. By 
respecting their customs and laws, and by granting 
civil lists to the emirs and fixed salaries to native 
officials, the loyalty of the "protected" to the "pro- 
tectors" was established upon the solid basis of 
financial interest. In 1910, Sir Frederick's successor 
in Northern Nigeria held a court at Kano, to which 
the emirs came from long distances. Fourteen 
thousand native cavalry formed his escort. An 
Imperial proclamation declared the land of the Pro- 
tectorate under the control of and at the disposition 
of the Crown, in order that natives might be assured 
of their rights to the land and to forest produce.^ 
In 191 1, when the railway to Kano was completed, 
the Government claimed that unarmed Europeans 
and natives could now travel with perfect security 
from one end of Northern Nigeria to the other. In 

* It is interesting to note that Great Britaia showed her good faith 
in the controversy with Belgium, which was acute at this time, by 
doing in Nigeria what she asked Belgium to do ia the Congo. 

293 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

1912, Sir Frederick Lugard returned to amalgamate 
the northern and southern Protectorate and the 
colony. He held a Durbar at Kano on New Year's 
Day, 1913, which was attended by emirs and chiefs 
representing sixty-eight tribes, loyal and contented 
under British rule. 

While Northern Nigeria was being penetrated and 
conquered, Southern Nigeria increased in prosperity 
every year. After the inclusion of the Lagos colony, 
Southern Nigeria was more than self-supporting. 
In 1908, there was a revenue surplus of over £200,000 
and grants from the Imperial Government had been 
discontinued. The revenue had doubled in five 
years, and the sound financial condition of the colony 
made possible the issue of a loan of £3,000,000 at 
four per cent, for harbor works and railway construc- 
tion. 1910 brought an increase of £350,000 revenue 
(25 per cent.) over 1909, and trade increased £2,- 
000,000. The tin mining area in exploitation had 
tripled. One ton of tin was exported in 1903 : fifteen 
hundred tons in 1912. In 1 913, it was reported that 
the total trade of Southern Nigeria had more than 
doubled in six years, and that the surplus of revenue 
had reached £120,000. In 19 14 the Colonial Office 
was able to reduce railway rates and the scale of tin 
mining royalties. 

Although during the same period Northern Nigeria 
was still costing much more than it brought in, 
it was considered wise, as in the case of Sierra Leone, 
to unite the Northern Protectorate with the prosper- 
ous colony and Southern Protectorate. Hinterland 
development would mean prosperity for the coast. 

294 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

The coast had every reason, then, to be glad to con- 
tribute to that development, and to supervise and 
manage it. 

On January I, 1914, the union was effected, and the 
public debt unified. In view of the war that followed 
so soon, with the long and arduous campaign that 
had to be undertaken against Kamerun, union came 
at a most fortunate moment. 

In Nigeria as in the Sudan, East Africa, Uganda 
and Nyasaland, the first decade of the twentieth 
century was marked by an extraordinary interest in 
cotton-growing experimentation. In 1902 a move- 
ment was begun, backed by money and specialists 
from the British Cotton-Growing Association, to 
make cotton the staple industry of British West 
Africa. Ginning mills were erected and premiums 
offered — in many cases facilities for loans granted to 
those who were willing to undertake the cultivation 
of cotton. For several years there was much enthusi- 
asm. In spite of some failures in 1906, cotton cul- 
tivation was believed to be the great industry of the 
future. Mr. Winston Churchill evidently believed 
of West Africa what he had said of East Africa during 
and after his trip from Mombasa to Cairo overland. 
When the bill for the Kano railway was introduced 
in 1907, Mr. Churchill told Parliament that this rail- 
way would mean the development of a new cotton- 
growing area which was going to save Lancashire from 
dependence upon the United States!^ It was a typi- 

^ Sir Gilbert Parker remarked that the commercial uses of the Kano 
railway, as Mr. Churchill exposed them, made the bill inconsistent 
with the free trade policy of the Government. Mr. Churchill re- 

295 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

cally Churchill utterance, very much like later 
combined boasts and prophecies about the defense 
of Antwerp, dragging the Germans out of Wilhelms- 
haven like rats, and walking across the Gallipoli 
peninsula to Constantinople. Cotton is not exactly 
a failure in Nigeria, but the promises and hopes of 
1907 have certainly remained unfulfilled. Only 
£150,000 of cotton was exported in 19 13, less than 
one-thirtieth of the value of the palm-oil export. 
Tin, which just began to be a Nigerian industry in 
the year of Mr. Churchill's speech, was an export 
four times the value of cotton in 19 13. 

For all this, the activities of the British Cotton- 
Growing Association bear watching on the part of 
the United States : and the progress of cotton cultiva- 
tion in Africa and in Asiatic Turkey foreshadow a 
time — perhaps not far distant — when Europe will 
no longer need the cotton of our Southern States. 
The cotton-manufacturing industry in America ought 
to be developed along with the cotton-growing in- 
dustry in Africa. When the day arrives that Lan- 
cashire will no longer need our raw material, we must 
be in the position no longer to need Lancashire's 
manufactured goods. 

This summary review of the histoiy of Nigeria is 
sufficient to indicate the secret of British success in 
African colonization. It is in the character of the 
men entrusted with colonial administration, their 
enterprise, their vision, their ability to conciliate, 

plied that there was a wide difference between improving trafl&c 
communications and erecting a tariff wall. 

296 



THE BRITISH IN WEST AFRICA 

and make happy the natives whom they have sub- 
dued. Up to the present time, England has fur- 
nished the unique example of a nation able to utilize 
its best talent in the building of an overseas Empire. 
Napoleon was not wrong when he called the English 
a nation of shopkeepers. They are merchants par 
excellence, and their foreign policy has been dictated 
ever since the days of Cromwell by purely commercial 
considerations. They spend their money and they 
sacrifice the blood of their people only when they 
know it is going to pay them to do so. But by a 
curious paradox, the men who have made Great 
Britain the premier commercial nation of the world 
have been led into the work of building the Empire 
because they themselves looked down upon and 
scorned to enter trade. Just as in feudal days the 
fighting men purchased the right to a place above 
their fellows and became the aristocracy by being 
willing to take the risk and the burden of defending 
the peasants of the field and the artisans of the city, 
so up to the present time the British aristocracy has 
preserved its caste and its privileges by devoting 
its energies and its brains and its blood to the enrich- 
ment and protection of traders and manufacturers. 
The Liverpool and London merchant and the Man- 
chester and Shefiield manufacturer grows rich. The 
Liverpool and London ship-owner grows rich. He is 
perfectly willing to take off his hat to the military 
and naval officers and the colonial administrators 
who are making possible his prosperity. In the city 
and in the country he yields precedence to the no- 
bility and the county families. Their children are 

297 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

sacrificing themselves for his children. When he 
teaches his son the mysteries of the bank balance, he 
teaches him at the same time what is due to those 
who make that bank balance possible. Why not? 
As long as he is content with the station of life to 
which God has called him, and his "betters" are 
content with theirs, why not indeed? 

Perhaps the war is going to change all this. But if 
it does, it will change the colonies also. 



298 



CHAPTER XV 
THE GERMANS IN WEST AFRICA 

ON the north side of the Gulf of Guinea, Ger- 
many is ensconced in a narrow strip of 
territory called Togoland. This colony, 
with Great Britain's Gold Coast colony, is an en- 
clave in French territory between Dahomey and the 
Ivory Coast. The German boundary on the west 
with Great Britain is partly formed by the Volta 
River. On the east, the Mono River divides Togo- 
land from Dahomey. Both with France and Great 
Britain the lateral boimdaries of the hinterland are 
conventional lines not exactly defined. Togoland 
has very little coastline. For Great Britain holds 
both sides of the Volta River and its mouth, including 
all of Cape St. Paul, and France holds Great Popo 
Island. Lome, the railway terminus of Togoland, is 
as much at the mercy of the British, as Swakopmund, 
the terminus of German Southwest African railways. 
On the west side of the Gulf of Guinea, between 
British Nigeria and French Gabun, Germany has the 
large colony of Kamerun, with an extensive coastline 
that includes most of the Bight of Biafra. Kamerun 
extends north to Lake Chad in a narrow wedge 
between the Shari and Yedseran rivers, and south- 

299 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

east tO' the Congo in two wedges cutting through 
French Equatorial Africa. Rio Muni, or Spanish 
Guinea, is a little enclave in Kamerun, on the east 
side of the Gulf of Guinea, not far from the Franco- 
German border. The island of Fernando Po off 
the Kamerun coast, in the Bight of Biafra, is also 
Spanish territory. Since France has by treaty the 
right of preemption to Spain's African colonies, 
Germany has been in Kamerun, as elsewhere, not 
wholly master of her own destinies. 

Togoland was neglected by France and Great 
Britain, although they had established themselves 
prior to the time when Germany began to have 
colonial ambitions at several points along the coast. 
There was just one wee opening for the Germans on 
the coast. Little Popo Island, on which German mer- 
chants had established factories in order to escape 
the duties levied by the British on the Gold Coast. 
The chief from whom these Germans had obtained 
concessions died opportunely in 1883, and the dispute 
over his succession gave the German Consul for 
West Africa the chance to slip in and hoist the German 
flag. By exploration of the hinterland, and succes- 
sive treaties with tribal chiefs, a wider interior came 
under German sovereignty. In 1897 and 1899, 
treaties with France and Great Britain settled the 
general limits and the international status of the 
colony. JThe natives were brought under adminis- 
trative control with much less difficulty than France 
experienced in Dahomey and Great Britain in 
Ashanti. In 1900, a military force of seven Germans 
and 150 natives was all the colony needed. 

300 



THE GERMANS IN WEST AFRICA 

In the early days of the colony, Germany received 
a decided setback from the fact that France was able 
to make good her claim to Great Popo Island, which 
controls the larger portion of the coast. But the Ger- 
mans consoled themselves for this political setback 
by starting commercial development of Little Popo 
and the Togo hinterland on a remarkably successful 
basis. Almost from the beginning they were able to 
substitute cash payments for barter to the great satis- 
faction and advantage of the natives. They put their 
minds, also, on the problem of getting out of the palm 
oil and palm nut industries all there was in them. So 
they were soon able to control the greater part of the 
Dahomey production. By establishing regular steam- 
ship service and by being able to offer a higher price 
for palm products, they succeeded in making Ham- 
burg the depot for Dahomey as well as for Togoland. ' 

Togoland is one of the few happy colonies in Africa 
without a miHtary and political history. Both from 
the administrative and economic point of view, the 
colony was weU organized and on the way to self- 
support at the beginning of the twentieth century. 
By 1905, a coast railway was completed from Little 
Popo to Lome. In the next five years two railways 
were built into the interior from Lome, and surveys 
have since been made to extend the Lome-Atakpame 
line to the very north of the colony.^ Lome, like 

^ See below, pp. 

* Togoland has had the common experience of colonies which 
keep railways and other public works in their own hands. Railway 
receipts in 1912 were seventy per cent, in excess of running expenses. 
After interest charges were paid and depreciation reserve laid aside, 
the profit to the colonial budget was considerable. 

301 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Swakopmund, Luderitzberg, and Dar-es-Salaam, 
represents Germany at her best in Africa. In build- 
ings, public works, and sanitation Lome is the model 
city of the West African coast. 

Germany has outstripped other colonizing powers 
in Africa in four things, all of which are strikingly 
illustrated in the little colony of Togoland: road- 
building for cooperation with railways and transport ; 
accommodation for travelers in the interior; scienti- 
fic forestry ; and supervision of public health. 

In a quarter of a century, with very limited means 
at their disposal, the Germans have built 750 miles 
of roads over which motor cars can run. Every 
mile has been placed to feed communities whose 
products for export justify the money put into the 
road. Nowhere in Africa, where white colonists 
are lacking, are the natives so well served in the way 
of roads as in Togoland. One can say the same of 
conveniences for travelers. Togoland is unique in 
its rest-houses for Europeans and for natives. At 
the end of the day's journey, one can always be sure 
of a comfortable place to sleep, where cleanliness is 
invariable. From personal experience on the Bag- 
dad Railway in Asia Minor, I can testify to the joy 
the traveler finds in the modest little hotels that go 
with the German wherever he penetrates. In sharp 
contrast to the uncomfortable and filthy native 
accommodations in the Near East and in Africa are 
the clean beds and rooms and the wholesome food of 
the German inns. 

None accuses Germany of not having got the most, 
from the European standpoint, out of the colonies she 

302 



THE GERMANS IN WEST AFRICA 

possessed in Africa. We have spoken above of Dr. 
Rohrbach's report about the possibiHties of Southwest 
Africa for cattle-raising, and the generous assist- 
ance given by the Government to encourage stock- 
breeding. In Togoland, the problem of forestation 
has received long and intensive study, and been the 
subject of reports, that have aided immensely the 
officials of other colonizing Powers. Herr Metzger, 
Forestry Superintendent of Togoland, found that 
sixty per cent, of Togoland was covered by non- 
productive growth, due to wasteful methods of the 
natives through many centuries. The reclamation of 
that land, and the better yielding of the forty per 
cent, under cultivation and virgin forest, was one of 
the principal ambitions of the Togoland Government. 
Mahogany was scientifically grown to a certain ex- 
tent; but the marvelous development was in teak, 
which thrives everyivhere. As in Hungary and Bul- 
garia, German forestry experts were reconstructing 
the forests by planting seedlings. 

What the Germans accomplished in educating the 
natives in preventive medicine, and in caring for 
their personal and corrimunal health and cleanliness, 
is marvelous. Not only were Government officials 
tireless in preaching the value of keeping clean, being 
vaccinated, burning or burying refuse, making a war 
on the fly and the mosquito, and other matters that 
are still not fully appreciated in many parts of Europe, 
but they enlisted the cooperation of paramount and 
local chiefs to an extent unknown elsewhere in Africa. 
The fight against malaria, yellow fever, sleeping- 
sickness, skin diseases, and tuberculosis, was carried 

303 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

on with unremitting vigilance and enthusiasm. The 
greatest success was - in vaccination. Smallpox is 
the most dreaded scourge of the country. The 
German propaganda made the native so alive to the 
value of vaccination that they came and asked for it 
and many paramount chiefs established compulsory 
vaccination by law. 

In the same week that Dr. Nachtigal hoisted the 
German flag in Togoland, he succeeded in getting a 
foothold on the Kamerun coast by making treaties 
with native chiefs. He outwitted the commander of 
an English gunboat, who had proceeded to the Gulf 
of Guinea to prevent the Germans from getting a 
foothold there. Almost a year of discussion between 
the London, Paris, and Berlin Foreign Offices fol- 
lowed. Great Britain and France both had claims 
to footholds on the Kamerun coast. But Germany 
advanced similar claims to footholds at the mouth of 
the Niger and at Konakry, in French Guinea. Ger- 
man, French, and British claims all rested on shadowy 
foundations. If one be admitted, the others were 
equally good. As Germany's claim at the mouth of 
the Niger was just like the claim by which the British 
at that time were hoping to oust the Portuguese from 
Delagoa Bay, London thought it best to make a 
treaty with Berlin, recognizing Germany in Kamerun 
in return for German recognition of British rights in 
Nigeria. France ceded Great Batanga to Germany 
in return for Konakry. 

For fifteen years not much was done by British 
and Germans to develop the hinterland between 
Nigeria and Kamerun and Lake Chad. Great 

304 



THE GERMANS IN WEST AFRICA 

Britain and Germany got busy only when they saw 
the French trying to put the whole Lake Chad region 
under the French flag. In 1902, Germany and Great 
Britain cooperated in a military and surveying 
expedition along their common frontier with the 
object of fixing boundaries. The underlying motive 
was, of course, to prevent the French from getting 
into the Bornu country, between their colonies and 
Lake Chad. Nigerian and Kamerun authorities 
were in perfect accord, and the official reports of 
1903 are much in the nature of a mutual admiration 
society. The object of cooperation was accorhplished. 
Native tribes were "pacified, " and at the beginning 
of 1904 France saw that she had to accept Britain 
and Germany as neighbors on Lake Chad. British 
and German authority was firmly established in 
Nigeria and Kamerun in 1904 from the coast to Lake 
Chad. The definite Anglo-German boundary was 
not fixed until 1 913 — except at the farther unknown 
Lake Chad end. That was the only part of the game 
which needed hurry and an understanding. That 
the British Cabinet did not hesitate, even after 
pourparlers were under way, to continue to work with 
Germany in Morocco and to seek German aid in doing 
France out of her "legitimate rights" to Bornu is 
one of the factors in causing France to yield a few 
points she was holding out for in making the agree- 
ment with Great Britain. The Anglo-French Agree- 
ment of 1904 was business from beginning to end. 
There was no sentiment in it — except in retrospect. 

Germany had much trouble with native outbreaks 
in Kamerun. The hinterland is vast and mountain- 

30 305 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

oti^ and does not possess navigable waterways such 
as the British have in Nigeria. MiHtary and ad- 
ministrative expenses were very heavy. But mahog- 
any, ebony, ivory, rubber, and cultivated products 
made the colony actually as well as potentially one of 
great wealth. Kamerun is a splendid rubber coun- 
try. The Germans looked at the rubber question 
from a broad scientific standpoint, keeping always in 
mind the future. Private concessionnaires, with their 
killing off of rubber trees and rubber gatherers, have 
not been allowed to give Kamerun the bad name 
of adjacent French and Belgian territory. Cocoa 
plantations doubled between 1908 and 1913. Timber 
export nearly quintupled in the same period. Mining 
industries, being wholly dependent upon transport, 
are not developed: although many minerals exist. 
The colony found fortune enough in forest and 
agricultural produce. 

Kamerun territory was substantially increased, 
and given an outlet in two places to the Congo River, 
by the "compensations" granted by France in ex- 
change for the recognition of the Protectorate over 
Morocco. The New Kamerun was enthusiastically 
and glowingly depicted to the German people by 
those who had to justify the Agadir coup and its 
aftermath. But the Reichstag thought very little 
of the diplomacy of the Foreign Office and the results 
accomplished by it. Almost immediately after the 
Congo territories were ceded by France, Germany had 
native troubles, which compelled the establishing of 
garrisons and the expenseof a large punitive expedition. 

Before Germany adopted a colonial policy, backed 
306 



THE GERMANS IN WEST AFRICA 

by popular support, there was maladministration in 
Togoland and Kamerun, involving the governors of 
both colonies. In 1905, native chiefs of Kamerun 
protested directly to Berlin against the system of 
government of Von Puttkamer. To prove their 
charges, the Kamerun chiefs presented a register of 
arbitrary acts committed by the governor and his 
subordinates. These were numerous well-authenti- 
cated cases of brutality and administrative oppres- 
sion. The whole matter was aired in the German 
press and in the Reichstag. The governors were 
recalled and tried. Both were found guilty of mal- 
administration, and one of cruelty. Popular indigna- 
tion was as great as at the time of the Peters trial. ^ 
Had there been no strong, irresistible public opinion, 
aroused by the appeal of the chiefs and the presenta- 
tion of their pathetic evidence, the governors would 
have escaped trial. For Berlin bureaucracy went 
to the extent of destroying documents on file in the 
desire to save the culprits. The scandal led to the 
resignation of Prince Hohenlohe, and the abolition 
of the disastrous system of entrusting the manage- 

^ Dr. Peters, like Stanley and other famous African explorers, 
was charged with the most unbelievable cruelties to natives in the 
course of his trips in Central Africa. Stanley was never brought to 
book, as was Peters, but I have been assured by the Countess 
di Villamarina, whose first husband was a scientist who died on one 
of Stanley's trips, that her husband's diary gave irrefutable proof 
of Stanley's heartrending brutality. The mania to torture natives 
seems to attack often the white man in the jungle. It is a mental 
malady. Whatever might be said in extenuation of explorers or of 
lonely officials in remote posts, who become neurasthenic and lose 
their grip, there is no possible excuse for a governor of a colony who 
allows excesses to go on unpunished under a civil administration. 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

ment of the colonies to aristocrats and bureaucrats. 
Dr. Dernberg, a bank manager, succeeded Hohenlohe. 
The General Election brought to the new business 
management of the colonies Reichstag support. It 
was the beginning of a new era. 

Like the British and French, the Germans had 
great hopes of finding a source of cotton supply in 
their African colonies that would make them in- 
dependent of the United States. We have spoken 
elsewhere of British and French efforts and hopes, 
and the disappointments experienced, especially in 
West Africa. British initiative, in the matter of 
encouraging cotton-growing in West Africa, was 
largely private. The German Colonial Society, 
both in East Africa and West Africa, took up the 
matter of cotton-growing along the lines of the 
British Cotton-Growing Association. If success in 
the experimental stages was greater in the German 
than the British colonies in West Africa, it must be 
confessed that this success was largely due to the 
greater power over the native given to Europeans by 
the Germans than by the British. In British West 
African colonies, a European is fined who strikes a 
native. In the German colonies, one can flog a 
native up to twenty-five lashes. This helps greatly 
in making the native work. But the method is in- 
compatible with Anglo-Saxon ideas of the way things 
should be done. ^ 

' It must not be forgotten that the explanation of German success 
in road-building and in enforcing measures for health and cleanliness 
is due partly to compulsion of a character British Government 
ofiScials (I am sorry I cannot say also British colonists) would not 
use. 

308 



THE GERMANS IN WEST AFRICA 

In 1907, in his great speech before the Chambers of 
Commerce, Dr. Dernberg expressed the same opinion 
and the same prophecy as Mr. Winston Churchill, that 
West and East Africa were both admirably adapted 
to growing cotton and that the development of the 
industry in the African colonies would make the 
mother country independent of the United States. 
In German East Africa, cotton export increased from 
less than a thousand pounds in 1902 to half a million 
pounds in 1908, and nearly a million pounds in 19 13. 
Over two hundred and fifty thousand acres were laid 
out and in the process of development for cotton 
plantations in German East Africa when the war 
broke out . Togoland began cotton production in 1 90 1 
with twenty thousand pounds. In 1908, Togoland 
produced about a million pounds. Not much has yet 
been done with cotton in Kamerun. But the Ger- 
mans have been studying possibilities with all the 
keenness and energy they put into every economic 
problem. From the reports of Steubel, Dernberg, 
Warberg, and Solf , one gathers that Germany had high 
hopes of a glorious future in her African cotton cultiva- 
tion. East Africa was growing Egyptian cotton, and 
the price of land compared favorably with prices in 
Egypt and in Texas. After plow cultivation could be 
introduced,^ the probable yield of the African colo- 
nies was estimated at two and one-half million bales, 
which would satisfy the needs of German industry. 

^Plowing in many parts of Africa will not be practicable until 
the discovery of a means to destroy the tsetse fly or to protect from 
his bite makes possible the use of draft animals. The tsetse fly is 
the greatest drawback in Africa both to man and to beast. 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

From Duala, at the mouth of the Kam.erun River, 
a railway runs north behind the Kamerun Mountains 
into the Manenguba Mountains. A second line 
southeast from Duala had crossed the Sanaga River 
and was being constructed along the valley of the 
Nyong River, when the war broke out. A railway 
into the hinterland of Kamerun is going to be an ex- 
tremely slow and costly project. But it is bound to 
pay expenses, and. Until it is constructed, the hinter- 
land will remain largely undeveloped for want of 
means of transport. Animals cannot be used, and 
porterage is too expensive except for rubber and ivory. 
In the fifteen years from 1899 to 1913, imports in- 
creased from less than ten million marks to consider- 
ably over thirty million marks, and exports from less 
than five million marks to considerably over twenty 
million marks. The railways, as far as they were 
opened, were paying well, and the finances of the 
colony were on a very sound basis. 

Telegraphic communication in Togoland and 
Kamerup. had been developed in recent years fully 
as rapidly as anywhere in Africa, and telephonic 
communication more rapidly. The natives of Togo- 
land have better telephone service, and avail them- 
selves of it more freely, than in many European 
countries. In 1913, Kamerun was connected with 
Germany by direct cable, and at Kamina, north of 
Atakpame, in Togoland, was erected in the same year 
the largest wireless station in Africa, which was able 
to communicate directly with Germany. 

Aside from what they accomplished in the matter 
of sanitation and the spread of the knowledge of 

310 



THE GERMANS IN WEST AFRICA 

preventive medicine, the most remarkable achieve- 
ment of the Germans in West Africa was their school 
system. Although Kamerun has hardly more than 
half the area of its neighbor, Nigeria, and one-seventh 
of the population, its Government and assisted 
schools in 1913 were proportionately better attended 
than those of the British Protectorate. Similarly, 
Togoland has better school opportunities than its 
French and British neighbors. In 19 10, Kamerun 
made school attendance obligatory for children of 
both sexes. There was plenty of zeal and peda- 
gogical ability, and a very earnest desire to lift the 
natives to a higher level, morally as well as mate- 
rially. But the education was given without much 
affection and astonishingly little attention was paid 
to native psychology. There was too much of the 
idea of Germanizing what could not be Germanized 
and of willing that the natives learn rather than 
of winning them to learn. German colonization 
shows the same weaknesses and the strong points of 
the Teuton that have been revealed to the world 
during the last two years of Herculean struggle. 
Matchless in their commercial aptitude, in their 
industrial resourcefulness, in their scientific genius, 
and in the organization of their administration, the 
Germans are pitifully weak in political understanding, 
in diplomacy, and in ability to understand and handle 
other nations. 



3" 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE FRENCH IN WEST AFRICA AND THE 
SAHARA 

THE French African Empire touches the Atlan- 
tic coast at six places from the Sahara Desert 
to the Congo. Gambia and Sierra Leone, 
British colonies, the republic of Liberia, and Portu- 
guese Guinea, are enclaves of French territory on the 
Atlantic coast. The British Gold Coast and Ger- 
man Togoland are surrounded by French territory 
coming down to the Gulf of Guinea on either side. 
The French Empire also completely surrounds the 
enormous territory of British Nigeria and German 
Kamerun, reaching the Gulf of Guinea on the north 
in Dahomey and on the east in Gabun. The coast 
colonies of France in West Africa are Senegal, Guinea, 
Ivory Coast, Dahomey, and Gabun. AU these colo- 
nies have the same general characteristics, and are con- 
fronted with the same general economic and climatic 
conditions as their British and German neighbors. 
But they have the advantage of being connected 
with each other by contiguous territory and with a 
hinterland that goes to the very heart of Africa, and 
extends from the Congo to the Mediterranean without 
passing through foreign territory. The import- 

312 



/ 
FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

ance of this advantage is demonstrated by the 
fact that the growth and prosperity of the coast 
colonies in West Africa have followed the French 
penetration into the upper valleys of the Senegal 
and Niger and Congo and the spread of French terri- 
tory in the Sahara and the Sudan. 

French West Africa was almost all opened up and 
colonized and connected during the last decade of the 
nineteenth century. But its unity and official status 
were not determined until the decree of October i, 
1902, which divided French West Africa as follows: 
the colonies of Senegal, French Guinea, ' the Ivory 
Coast, Dahomey, and "the territories of Senegambia 
and the Niger." Gabun on the west side of the 
Gulf of Guinea was made a portion of French Equa- 
torial Africa. In the following year the territory 
between Senegal colony and Spanish Rio de Oro 
was organized as the Protectorate of Mauritania. 

Senegal is the oldest French colony in West Africa, 
and goes back to the days of Richelieu. Its capital, 
St. Louis, was settled in 1637, and is at the mouth 
of the Senegal River. But the most important city of 
Senegal is the modem fortified naval station of Da- 
kar on Cape Verde, the western point of the African 
continent. A railway connects these two cities. 
There is river navigation from St. Louis for nearly 
five hundred miles to the interior. But the great 
railway into the hinterland of West Africa joining 
the Senegal and Niger, to Kayes, the former capital 
of the, region, has its terminus at Dakar. A govern- 
ment cable has connected Dakar with Brest since 
1905* and there are other coastal cables, and cable 

313 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

connection with South America. French, German, 
and British lines make Dakar a regular port of call. 
Largely because it is the route of through trade from 
all the vast interior, Senegal has more than half the 
total trade of the French West African colonies, and 
reached nearly thirty milHon dollars in 19 13. 

French Guinea lies between Portuguese Guinea 
and the British colony of Sierra Leone. Its large 
port, Konakry, has been free since the Anglo-French 
Agreement of 1904, when the Los Islands, which 
command the coast, were ceded to France. If this 
had not been done, Konakry would have been in the 
unfortunate position of Swakopmund in German 
Southwest Africa — at the mercy of the British. 
This is one illustration of the many advantages that 
have accrued to France from the compounding of 
colonial rivalries with Great Britain. After the 
Anglo-French Agreement, the railway was pushed 
inland rapidly, and reached Kurussa on the Niger 
River in 191 1. A new era began for French Guinea 
and for the country at the headwaters of the Niger. 
It was an important step forward in the plan of 
joining the Ivory Coast in French Guinea by an 
interior railway. 

The Ivory Coast, between Liberia and the British 
Gold Coast, has a larger frontage on the ocean than 
either of its neighbors, and the great advantage, like 
all the French West African colonies, of free access 
to the great Senegal-Niger hinterland under the 
same flag. Lines drawn from the Ivory Coast and 
Dahomey directly north to Algeria pass all the way 
from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean through 

314 



FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

French territory, won and consolidated by French dar- 
ing and persistence in two generations. The most 
important part of the work, however, has been 
accomplished since the beginning of the twentieth 
centiiry, and has been made possible by railway 
extension and native armies. 

The French became acquainted with the Ivory 
Coast during the reign of Louis Philippe, while 
they were still involved in the conquest of Algeria. 
They did not make good intangible claims until 
1883, when rumor had it that Germany was looking 
for colonies. The Ivory Coast was connected with 
the hinterland in just the opposite way to that of 
most colonies. The penetration was from the 
interior to the coast. After the fall of Timbuktu, 
when many officials and military men and explorers 
were occupied with the problem of connecting the 
upper Niger valley with the Senegal valley, a young 
marine officer conceived the plan of penetrating also 
toward the Gulf of Guinea. While routes were 
being opened up from the Niger to Senegal and to 
Guinea, he would open up a route to the Ivory 
Coast. Between the Niger and the Ivory Coast 
lay the mountainous Kong region. For eighteen 
months, with one French companion, Captain Binger 
was lost to the world. He finally appeared on the 
Ivory Coast, having blazed a route for France with- 
out firing a shot. Bingerville, the port terminus 
of the railway that now runs into the heart of the 
Kong country, commemorates one of the most re- 
markable and most useful feats in the history of 
African exploration. 

315 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

The French have had much trouble with the 
natives of the Ivory Coast during recent years, and 
have been compelled to go to the expense of a num- 
ber of punitive expeditions. Yellow fever, and lack 
of railways and roads, as well as the mountain- 
ous character of the Kong region, made administra- 
tive work very difficult. The troubles culminated 
in the rebellion of 1909, which spread among 
many tribes. Disarmament had to be undertaken 
on a large scale. To their amazement, the military 
authorities were able to gather in eleven thousand 
rifles. This was a forcible argument for the advo- 
cates of carrying through the subjection of the Sahara 
and the Sudan. For as long as vast regions were left 
to tribes who did not acknowledge French authority, 
and who could not be controlled, gun-running would 
continue; and local authorities, with few troops at 
their disposal and an enormous administrative area, 
would always risk a serious revolt when they tried to 
collect taxes. 

The Ivory Coast-Kong railway serves a country 
rich in minerals and mahogany forests, and has ad- 
vanced far enough to make the plan of joining Senegal, 
French Guinea, and the Ivory Coast by an interior 
railway system a reality of the near future. Those 
who scoffed a decade ago at the idea of Timbuktu 
being connected by rapid steamer and railway service 
with Dahomey, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Sene- 
gal, have only to look at the map to understand that 
they would be doubting Thomases if they refused 
still to believe in the transformations French genius 
is making in West Africa. Fifteen years ago, it took 

316 



FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

three months to go from Dakar to Timbuktu. One 
can make the journey now in ten days. Fifteen 
years ago, French officials took a month for traveling 
from the Senegal River to the Niger River. Now 
they need two days. 

Next to Senegal, Dahomey, the narrow little 
wedge between Togoland and Nigeria, has the most 
distinctive personality of the West African colonies. 
The Ivory Coast and Guinea owe their importance 
to the hinterland, and to the development of French 
influence in the upper Niger valley. Their prosper- 
ity is largely dependent upon that of the whole of 
French West Africa. Senegal has suffered, from 
the point of view of individuality, since it became a 
province of West Africa. This is illustrated by the 
way Dakar, administrative center for the group of 
colonies, has eclipsed St. Louis, the old capital of 
Senegal.^ But Dahomey, farthest removed from 

' " Dakar, in 1902, was only a simple chance landing place, without 
coal and without water, where twice a month the Messageries Mari- 
times Company threw off hastily its passengers in order to flee as 
quickly as possible towards coasts less desert and climates less 
unhealthy. To-day, Dakar, protected from the sea by a powerful 
dyke, receives on its two moles three or four steamers a day (I have 
seen eleven in one day) which find in abundance coal, drinking 
water, fresh vegetables. The city is growing and is being embel- 
lished. In a few years Dakar wUl be one of those cosmopolitan ports 
like Port Said or Colombo, where people are elbowing each other in 
the streets, and where the largest and swiftest vessels of the world 
cross each other's path. And yet, the plan of 1902 appeared rash 
even to those who wanted to believe in it. The Governor-General 
was charged with megalomania, and here after a decade the port 
is too small, and is already being enlarged. " — M. Guy, former 
Governor of Senegal, in a lecture at the Ecole des Sciences Poli- 
tiques, April 16, 19 13. 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the influences that have brought into being since 
1900 a French Empire in the Senegal and Niger val- 
leys, still preserves her identity. Dahomey is an 
historic kingdom, inhabited by a race very dif- 
ferent from those of the hinterland and the other 
French colonies. It was conquered and annexed to 
France in somewhat the same way as Madagascar 
during the last decade of the nineteenth century, 
and as Ashanti nearby in the first years of . the 
twentieth century. 

Like its neighbor, Togoland, Dahomey has a very 
small stretch of coast. But, unlike Togoland, its 
ports are not at the mercy of other powers. There 
is excellent shelter and deep water at Kotonu. By 
her possession of the Grand Popo, France, like Great 
Britain, holds a part of the natural coastline of Togo- 
land. Railways penetrate inland from Kotonu 
nearly two hundred miles, and from the capital, 
Porto Novo, fifty miles along the Lagos frontier. 
There are less than seven hundred Europeans in the 
colony in the midst of a native population of nine 
hundred thousand. In the hinterland, between 
Dahomey and the Niger, is Borgu, which the British 
hoped to include in Nigeria, when their Protectorate 
was extended by Sir Frederick Lugard over the 
Sokoto Empire. 

In Algeria and Tunis, and in most of the West and 
Central African territories, France has been able — 

Dakar now has twenty-five thousand inhabitants, of whom over 
three thousand are French. Its poUce force numbers ten. St. 
Louis has about the same population, but only one-third as many 
French. 

318 



FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

sometimes in defiance of treaty rights — to destroy, by 
gradual measures, the principle of the open door 
which Great Britain and Germany follow, and 
which has been forced upon Belgium. The open 
door means fair play and equal advantages for all. 
Neither in tariffs nor in concession regulations are 
advantages granted to the subjects of the nation 
holding the colony which are not granted to subjects 
of other nations. Only by maintaining the open 
door is Great Britain able to justify the holding of 
one-fourth of the world's productive territories. 
Only by maintaining — or rather establishing fairly — 
the principle of equal advantages to all comers can 
France hope to keep and develop properly her vast 
African empire. If she attempts, after this war, to 
extend to the West African colonies the iniquitous 
tariff regime that has been put into practice in 
Algeria, Tunis, and Madagascar, not only will her own 
real interests be jeopardized, but she will have to face 
another war with Germany within the next genera- 
tion. A nation may hold, and justify her right to 
hold, colonies to the exclusion of other nations, by 
the exercise of superior colonizing ability. But it is 
unthinkable that she be allowed to make a national 
preserve of colonies in this period of world markets, 
unless she has the force to continue to keep others out. 
Bound by strict treaty obligations, France has 
been unable to make tariff discriminations in the 
Ivory Coast and Dahomey. She has taken upon 
herself similar obligations in regard to Morocco. 
The result has not been favorable to French com- 
merce. Dahomey illustrates the inferiority of French 

319 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

to German commercial methods. In 191 3, Germany 
had forty per cent, of the total commerce of Daho- 
mey, against France's twenty-four per cent. German 
ships carried sixty per cent, of the exports. German 
ships embarked and disembarked twice as much 
tonnage as French ships. Seventy-five per cent, of 
the palm nut output, valued at two million dollars, 
was bought by Germans, and most of it sent to 
Hamburg, which has become the first market in the 
world for this product. From Dahomey and the 
Ivory Coast together, Hamburg bought nearly a 
million dollars' worth of other forest products. From 
Senegal, Hamburg took in 1913, peanuts valued 
at one and one-quarter million dollars against French 
purchases of thirty thousand dollars. Many tons of 
peanuts from French West Africa were transported 
to Hamburg on German bottoms, and reshipped from 
Hamburg to France on other German bottoms, and 
sold to French buyers. The French paid Germany 
two commissions and two freight hauls on products of 
their own colonies! 

Last spring, when I was in the Riviera, I read in a 
local newspaper the following: 

"It is necessary to call attention once more to the 
method and perseverance of the Germans in their 
effort to gain the commerce of our colonies. They 
have not stopped with creating at Hamburg a market 
for palm nuts rivaling that of Liverpool, and with 
getting their money's worth out of the products they 
brought to this market. Their chemists set to work, 
with the result that, aside from the manufacture of 
soap and candles, their industry has succeeded in 
extracting from palm nuts different vegetable fats, 

320 



FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

appreciated for their cheapness in certain European 
regions, and which have a large market in America. 
More than this, they have been able to find on the 
spot a market for the residue, which has been adopted 
by stock raisers for nourishing cattle, and which 
unfortunately is not yet common as stock food in 
France and England. This way of getting all there 
is in a product permits them to pay the highest 
prices, and naturally it is towards the market where 
prices are highest that producers direct by preference 
their expeditions. "^ 

1 expected to read a splendid lesson, drawn by the 
writer from the wholesome truth he was putting 
before his fellow-countrymen. But instead of stating 
that Frenchmen must study German methods and 
try to emulate them, this writer proposed as a remedy 
for ruinous German competition the enactment of a 
law forbidding to Germans the privilege of doing 
business on any terms whatever with French colo- 
nies! This curious mental attitude — blindness, may 
we call it? — is alarmingly prevalent in France to-day. 
If what this writer says be true, what will be the 
result of the "remedy" he proposes? Producers 
will be cut off from the market where they get the 
best prices. They will be compelled to do business 
with merchants and manufacturers who are not alive 
to the full value of the product they are buying, or 
who do not know how or care to get the full value out 
of it. So they will not and cannot pay the prices 
Hamburg pays. The quotation I have cited proves 
that German competition is beneficial to the producer 
in the French colony. Who will suffer if this whole- 

' Nice Petit Nigois, April 25, 1916. 
21 321 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

some competition is destroyed by an arbitrary law? 
The whole world indirectly, but first of all, the 
French colony. 

Senegal colony has four self-governing communes, 
and the five thousand French citizens return a deputy 
to the Paris Parliament. The other coast colonies 
have not as yet reached the self-governing stage. 
There are too few Europeans. 

The British and German cotton-growing associ- 
ations have not been alone in their efforts to make 
West Africa a new source of the world's cotton sup- 
ply. The Association Cotonniere of Paris has been 
spending a great deal of money in West Africa for 
the past ten years. Cotton, as a wild plant, grows 
everywhere. The natives know its value, and make 
use of it in their weaving. But all attempts to culti- 
vate cotton for the market have failed, as in the 
German and British colonies. The natives find easier 
money in peanuts and forest produce. Cotton- 
growing is hard work, and requires a long period of 
waiting to gather the harvest, and the willingness 
to put aside seed for next year. Only if they are 
under the close and strict control of white over- 
seers wiU the negroes bother with cotton. That 
control cannot be exercised — whence the failure of 
cotton. 

In spite of their hinterland, and the advantages 
they enjoy from administrative and territorial union 
with each other, the coast colonies of French West 
Africa are not at all satisfied. The enclaves belong- 
ing to other Powers are a continual source of irri- 
tation, and, from the French standpoint, spoil the 

322 



FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

homogeneity of the Empire. French ImperiaHsts 
maintain that British Gambia is altogether an anom- 
aly. In the Agreement of 1904, Great Britain ceded 
Yarbutenda to France, together with the landing 
wharves on the river Gambia, and promised that if 
at any future time there was no longer free access by 
water from Yarbutenda to the ocean, further terri- 
tory woiild be yielded. This removed the serious 
economic difficulty of Southern Senegal and the 
Dentilia hinterland of not being able to enjoy the 
natural advantage of water transport on the Gam- 
bia. When the country is fully developed, the advan- 
tage gained in the Agreement of 1904 will be of the 
most substantial character. Within two years of the 
signing of the Anglo-French Agreement, the British 
Foreign Office was approached with a proposition to 
exchange Gambia for territories in the New Hebrides 
or for the complete renunciation of French rights in 
Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. The French claimed 
that the British would never be able to make any- 
thing out of the possession of the valley of the 
Gambia, and that it was a thorn in the flesh of an 
ally that ought to be withdrawn. They represented 
also that the commerce of Gambia was entirely in the 
hands of French houses. Similar overtures were 
made by France to Germany in 1912 to secure 
the cession of Togoland in exchange for territorial 
and political advantages elsewhere. I have under- 
stood from a good source that this proposition was 
first made to Germany after the Agadir crisis, and 
that it was blocked by the unwillingness of Great 
Britain to assent to the compensations France 

323 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

proposed to give Germany. The ambition of France 
to do away with Liberia altogether, and to buy 
Portuguese Guinea, was openly voiced the year before 
the war by a former governor of the Ivory Coast, 
who stands high in French colonial councils.^ 

Mauritania, as we have said before, was made a 
separate territory in 1903, at the time of the redistri- 
bution of Senegal territories and the formation of the 
Senegal-Niger colony. In 1909, when the decision 
to pacify the whole Sahara had been made, and when 
plans were definitely laid for seizing Morocco, 
Mauritania was made into a protectorate. Its 
northern boundaries have never been fixed, and 
taxes have not been widely collected from its popu- 
lation of nomad Moors. 

Behind the four coast colonies and the Mauritania 
Protectorate lies the fifth province of West Africa, 
whose history belongs almost wholly to the period 
after the decree of 1902. In the decree constituting 
West Africa, the great hinterland was called "the 
territories of Senegambia and of the Niger." After 
the restoration of the Senegal Protectorate to Senegal 
colony and the creation of Mauritania, the upper 
valleys of the Senegal and the Niger were without 
definite status. It was felt that civil administration 
should take the place of military administration 
wherever possible, especially since railway and 
steamer communication had been established with 
the coast. The relation, too, of the hinterland with 
the coast colonies, and with the Governor- General 
at Dakar, was extremely uncertain. In 1904, "the 

° See VAfrique du Nord (Paris, 1913), pp. 119-121. 

324 



FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

colony of Upper Senegal and of the Niger" was 
constituted. It was styled colony for want of a 
better word. It is unique among the colonies of 
Africa and of the whole world. Its boundaries are 
formed on the west and south by the French and 
other European West African colonies, on the east 
by a line from Lake Chad to the Tuareg-Azkar 
country on the southwestern border of Tripoli, 
and on the north by the Algerian sphere. It includes 
the upper valley of the Senegal River, two-thirds 
of the valley of the Niger, and a large bit of the 
Sahara Desert. In a territory of eight hundred 
thousand square miles there are six million natives 
and hardly more than a thousand Europeans. The 
eastern and northern portions of the colony are still 
under military control, but the river valleys are 
administered civilly. Timbuktu, near the top of 
the great bend of the Niger, is very nearly in the 
center of the colony. Just north of the bend of the 
Niger, the Sahara begins and stretches to the Al- 
gerian and Moroccan frontiers. 

The tenth degree of longitude, from the Mediter- 
ranean to the Atlantic, passes from Tunis through 
Ghadames and Ghat, the westernmost points of 
Tripoli, to the place where the Gulf of Guinea turns 
south in German territory. West of the tenth 
parallel is the big bend of Africa. Almost all of this 
quarter of the continent is now in French possession. 
Spain in Morocco; Portugal in Guinea; England in 
the valley of the Gambia, Sierra Leone, and the Gold 
Coast; Germany in Togoland; and the negroes 
mismanaging Liberia under American protection; are 

325 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

flies in the French ointment. But the great dis- 
appointments of France — "errors of vision," her 
Imperialists say — are the British in Nigeria and the 
Germans in Kamerun, stretching inland to the 
shores of Lake Chad, and disturbing France's 
"heritage" just across the desert from the Italian 
"intruders" of Tripoli. 

The Germans in Kamerun, especially since the 
territorial readjustments of 1912 have disturbed 
the continuity of French territory and French 
influence from the Mediterranean to the Congo. 
The French are hoping, however, to remedy this by 
eliminating Germany in the Treaty of 191 7. 
'j The great fault of France, thirty years ago, was to 
allow the ubiquitous English to install themselves at 
the mouth of the Niger, and then later to take in a 
third of the Niger valley, and all of the Benue 
valley. Not only this, but even after French West 
Africa had been administratively organized, the 
British were allowed to extend their Protectorate over 
the Hausa States and through Bornu to Lake Chad. 
British alertness and vigilance, seconded by genera- 
tions of experience and a fleet and a merchant 
marine, have enabled Britain to keep on the process 
inaugurated one hundred and fifty years ago of 
gathering in the choicest tit-bits for colonies every- 
where in the world. West Africa follows the general 
rule. In 1891, when British authority was definitely 
established in the lower Niger valley, and the French 
were expending their energies against savage tribes of 
Senegambia and the upper Niger and pacifying desert 
wastes, Lord Salisbury ironically declared: "To 

326 



FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

the French the Sahara and the northern caravan 
routes, the Niger where the cataracts are, the sand 
and the bush and the waterless wastes; to the Eng- 
lish Sokoto, Bornu, and the splendid route of the 
navigable Niger and the fertile Benue valley." 
' By the Agreement of 1904, the English allowed 
France a frontier with Northern Nigeria that did 
not quite push her into the desert. But on the 
whole. Lord Salisbury's words still contain the 
kernel of the matter. Britain bars France's outlet 
by the Niger to the sea. The French have reached 
Lake Chad at the price of herculean efforts and con- 
stant sacrifice of human life and treasure. But the 
sides of Lake Chad, from which there is exit by rich 
and fertile territories to the sea, are in British and 
German hands (all in British hands now). France 
holds the desert sides of Lake Chad, from which the 
exit to the sea passes through the Sahara to the 
north and to the west. The French at Lake Chad, 
in addition to their desert route, are several times 
farther to the sea than are the British. The Senegal, 
which the French control, is a very small stream 
compared to the Niger, which the British control. 
The errors and disappointments, and the flies in 
the ointment, do not make West Africa any the less 
one of the epic colonizing feats of history, and a rich 
reward for the devotion and sacrifice of those who 
have given their lives to make West Africa French. 
In a brief review of this character, there is not the 
space to recount the exploits of many others who 
performed feats that rivaled that of Binger in travers- 
ing the country from the Niger to the Ivory Coast. 

327 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

There was the exploration of the upper Senegal, 
the crossing from the Senegal to the Niger, the 
exploration of the Niger, the opening of the routes 
to Lake Chad from the Niger and across the Sahara 
from the north, and the opening of the route from 
Algeria to the Niger across the desert. First there 
were the explorers, who had no maps and no more 
knowledge of where they were coming out or whether 
they would come out than Columbus had. Then 
.military expeditions followed, which had to over- 
come by far the greatest difficulties that any coloniz- 
ing power in Africa has encountered in the way of 
armed resistance and of transporting supplies and of 
keeping open a line of communication. The French 
accomplished the bulk of their work of conquest 
before the days of wireless telegraphy, and when 
parliaments opposed even the smallest grant for 
African colonization. There was no glory, no 
reward in what they did. The metropolitan news- 
papers could hardly be induced to mention the 
battles in which French officers lost their lives. 

From the standpoint of the pocket-book, France 
had begun to reap a rich harvest from the work 
of her West African colonizers several years before 
the Great War interrupted economic progress in 
Africa. In ten years the receipts of the general bud- 
get had more than doubled, and each year the sur- 
plus was increasing. Trade passed from twenty- six 
million dollars in 1905 to fifty-six miUion dollars 
in 1 91 3. Nearly three thousand kilometers of rail- 
ways, government owned, and a large river steam- 
ship service, government run, were bringing in a net 

328 



FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

profit of over a million dollars a year. Plans were 
made to double the railway system, and to borrow 
one hundred and twenty million dollars for that 
purpose. In 1902, the only railway in French West 
Africa was the Uttle line of a private company, 
joining Dakar and St. Louis. 

West Africa has meant most to France, though, 
as a training school for army officers and as a reser- 
voir of splendid faithful troops. The last two years 
have amply justified the plea that has so long been 
made in the Chamber of Deputies, that every bit of 
energy and money put into Africa would come back 
with interest when the day of France's need for more 
men arrived. For from Africa would be brought the 
trained soldiers to equalize France's inferiority in 
population to Germany. As an American and an 
Anglo-Saxon, I cannot overcome my personal pre- 
judice against the idea of introducing African troops 
to fight white men. As a student of history, I have 
my misgivings about the ultimate wisdom of the 
Anglo-French policy of calHng upon Africa and 
Asia to help fight their battle in Europe. But under 
the circumstances of 19 14, when France found her- 
self suddenly the victim of a long and methodically 
planned aggression, what Frenchman in his right 
senses would have opposed calling to the rescue 
every possible helper? They came from Senegal, 
from Morocco, from Algeria, from Tunis, from the 
desert, thousands of excellent soldiers, eager to fight 
for France. And they played an important part 
during two years up to the moment that the defense 
of Verdun proved the turning-point of the war. 

329 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Equal in military value to their possibilities as 
reservoirs of men are North and West Africa as 
training grounds for officers. Constant African 
fighting since 1900 has given to officers of the French 
army a more valuable experience in actual warfare 
than that enjoyed by the officers of other European 
Powers. Great Britain had officers with fighting 
experience — but they were few in number. The 
Germans had the training and the discipline, but it 
was of the schools. When the armies came into 
conflict in 1914, the practical advantage was wholly 
with France. 

The Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 and the set- 
tling definitely of the limits and status of the French 
West African colonies made possible for the first 
time maps that were not guesswork. Frontiers 
were delimited with Great Britain in the Gold Coast 
and in Nigeria, and with Germany around Lake Chad 
and in Togoland. In 1907, an Anglo-French treaty 
fixed, in accordance with the spirit of the Agree- 
ment of 1904, the important border from the Niger 
to Lake Chad. Within a year this frontier was 
completely furnished with stone pyramids and other 
permanent marks for a distance of a thousand miles. 
The Sudan and Lake Chad frontiers with Kamerun 
and the Togoland boundary were finally settled by 
the Franco-German Commission that sat at Berne 
in the summer of 19 12 to arrange the Morocco 
" compensations. " 

When the French went to Algiers, a fine was 
drawn some few miles back from the coast beyond 
which it was believed they would never pass. The 

330 



FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

conquest of the Kabyles marked another "extreme 
limit." But in time expeditions got all the way to 
the desert. That was certainly the end! The 
French penetrated the Niger valley by way of the 
Atlantic and the Senegal. They were south and 
north of the Sahara. In order to open a route to 
Central Africa, the West African penetration was 
carried beyond Lake Chad into the Sudan. In order 
to make secure the hinterland of Algeria and Tunis, 
and prevent slave-trade, gun-running, and the pan- 
Islamic propaganda, North African penetration was 
carried to the border of Tripoli into the Tuareg 
country. The Tuaregs inhabited both sides of the 
desert, and the oases of the desert. They were as 
numerous south of Timbuktu as they were south of 
Ghat, and they barred the way from the Niger to 
Lake Chad. 

In 1900, French officers, who had taken part in 
desert expeditions and who were interested in the 
development of West Africa and the Sudan, began 
to declare that the Sahara must be pacified, and 
that all the caravan routes must be in the hands of 
the French. They were treated as madmen or fools. 
Ten years later what they advised was not only 
attempted, but was pretty well on the way of reali- 
zation. A French Minister of War once had plans 
drawn up, and filed in the Rue Saint-Dominique 
for a Sudan expedition from Algeria. He counted on 
a force of forty thousand men — owing to the neces- 
sity of conquering the Tuaregs. Eventually they 
were conquered by a few hundred natives on camels 
under the command of a few dozen Frenchmen. 

331 



THE NEW MAP OP AFRICA 

Establishing order in the Sahara became possible — 
and easy — when European and even Algerian 
methods were given up, and nomad tribes were 
organized militarily. By the Meharistes the French 
have succeeded in policing the Sahara, and making 
safe the caravan routes. The French flag now flies 
on every important oasis. In 1906, military patrols 
of West Africa and Algeria met in the Sahara. They 
have been meeting ever since. Rarely do they have 
to use their arms. The best way to get to Timbuktu 
and Lake Chad is still by Senegal. But crossing 
from Algeria is not impossible. 

The military problem in West Africa has been 
solved. The problem of communications is well on 
the way to solution. Miraculous economic develop- 
ment depends wholly upon the solution of the labor 
problem. West Africa is a white man's country nei- 
ther on the coast nor in the hinterland. Agricultural 
settlers, to take up and work the land, as in Algeria 
and Tunis, cannot be expected. Travel facilities, 
medicines, and knowledge of how to dress and what 
to eat and the precautions to take against fevers, 
have made it possible for white men to live and move 
about in the country. But aside from traders and 
officials, and managers of plantations,, no Europeans 
live in West Africa. Given the security of an 
organized government, the direction of skilled men, 
the establishment of banks and commercial firms, 
and, above all, means of transportation, the natives 
of West Africa will have to work out themselves the 
destinies of West Africa. If the country is to go 
ahead, and develop wealth, the natives will have to 

332 



FRENCH AFRICAN EMPIRE 

do the work. The labor problem, then, as every- 
where in Africa, is the chief preoccupation of officials 
and students of these French colonies.^ 

Nowhere is the population as large as it ought to 
be. Nowhere do the natives show much disposition 
to work. Negroes have no sense about caring for 
their own health or the health of their children, and 
no thought of putting aside to-day something for 
to-morrow's needs. Plagues and epidemics spread 
very rapidly among them. They make no attempt 
to check illness in their families and in their com- 
munities. When they have a good year, and make 
money, they stop work until they have spent their 
surplus. As inseparable to the negro as his skin 
is the notion that one works only when he has to. 
Since West Africa is not a white man's country, the 
hope of the future lies wholly in the Europeaniza- 
tion of the natives. Physicians and dispensaries, 
teachers and schools are what West Africa must 
have. Economic prosperity is an idea of ours and a 
goal of ours. Civilization is what we have created, 

^ Slave-trade has practically disappeared. But house slavery, as 
in all European colonies where Islam is the religion, continues to 
exist, and is exceedingly difficult to cope with. In a circular of Dec. 
4, 1905, M. Roume, Governor-General of West Africa, said: "The 
coming of native populations into a state of more advanced civili- 
zation is not accomplished by decrees. It will result only from a 
series of patient and convergent efforts, having for purpose the 
moral and material betterment of the native by assuring to each one 
his rights, especially the most sacred of all, the liberty of the individ- 
ual. " But, until the individual knows and feels that liberty is a 
right and his right, what can decrees accomplish? The abolition of 
slavery, like every other reform in the world, is a matter of enlighten- 
ment through education rather than of law. 

333 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

and what we think is a thing to have. In parts of 
Africa where the white man can live, he can estab- 
lish his ideas and his goal and his civilization by 
dispossessing the native of the land, and taking it for 
himself. In other parts of Africa, when we attempt 
to introduce our civilization we demoralize the 
native, both from the physical and social point of 
view, unless we can somehow get him to see things as 
we do and understand and appreciate the new environ- 
ment as we understand and appreciate it. Unless 
physician and teacher inculcate into him our ideas 
of health and wealth he will have neither. Nor wiU 
the Europeans who live with him. 



334 



CHAPTER XVII 

FRENCH PENETRATION INTO CENTRAL 
AFRICA 

LAiCE CHAD is south of the Sahara Desert, 
directly opposite the southernmost- angle of 
Tripoli, on the line of latitude that passes 
through Sicily and Naples. British Nigeria and 
German Kamerun form its south and east shores. 
The rest of the lake is bordered by what the French 
Imperialists dreamed it would all be — French terri- 
tory. Lake Chad stands about halfway across the 
African continent. Directly to the west the French 
colony of Senegal, with its great modem port of 
Dakar, lies on the Atlantic coast. Between Senegal 
and Lake Chad all is French territory. Directly to 
the east, at the depth of the Gulf of Aden, and hold- 
ing the African shore of the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, 
lies French Somaliland, with its port of Djibouti. 
During the last half of the nineteenth century Lake 
Chad was to mark the middle point of a trans- 
continental railway, just as real to French Imperial- 
ists as was the Cape to Cairo Railway to British 
Imperialists. 

But while the French were expending their ener- 
gies in the barren wastes of North Central Africa, the 

335 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

British were occupied with realities. In South 
Africa, they were planning to absorb the Dutch 
republics. In North Africa, the reconquest of the 
Sudan by Lord Kitchener and his combined British 
and Egyptian army came just in time to frustrate the 
plans and hopes of France. The French had reached 
Fashoda on the Nile, almost to the Abyssinian border. 
They had actually planted their flag there. The 
British told them to take the flag down. It was 
either obey or go to war. They could not go to 
war: so they obeyed. The final argument in African 
colonization has always been force. There were 
many coups in African colonial poHtics before Agadir. 
The British, of course, argued that the whole valley 
of the Nile was Egyptian territory, abandoned only 
temporarily to the Mahdi, and that the French had 
no right there. But had the tables been reversed, 
the British certainly would never have hauled 
down the flag. Possession is nine points of the law — • 
no, ten — if you have force on your side, and only if 
you have force on your side. 

After the humiliation of Fashoda, France made an 
agreement about the Sudan, in which Tibesti, Borku, 
Wadai, and the Chad territory south to the Niger were 
recognized as hers by Great Britain in return for 
leaving the British in undisputed possession of the 
desert of Libya, at the eastern end of the Sahara, 
and of the whole valley of the Nile, and acknowledg- 
ing British rights over Darfur. 

The Sudan Convention of 1899 was a very reason- 
able arrangement. If one grants the intention of the 
British to remain permanently in Egypt, and the ad- 

336 



FRANCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA 

visability of their doing so, both for their own interest 
and for the interest of the Egyptians, the possession of 
the Egyptian Sudan was certainly essential to assure 
the future political security and economic prosperity 
of Egypt, and the action of Kitchener in compelling 
the French withdrawal from Fashoda was just and 
wise and logical. But at that time the French 
denied the British right to stay in Egypt. In fact, 
they had Great Britain's word that she intended to 
withdraw from Egypt. Hence the British claim to 
the upper Valley of the Nile, based on Egyptian rights 
that had practically been abandoned, was to the 
French bad faith and brutal bluff. But the British 
were going to stay in Egypt, and the French had 
their hands full pacifying and organizing the already 
tremendous territories in Africa to which they laid 
claim. By the Convention of 1899, France had a 
right to expect British diplomatic support against 
Italy and Turkey in the north, and against Ger- 
many who was making great strides in the hinter- 
land of Kamerun. The Sudan Convention was the 
precursor of the general agreement of five years later, 
which made possible the Entente Cordiale. French, 
as well as British Imperialists, then, cannot in 
retrospect deplore the Fashoda crisis and the conse- 
quent clearing of the atmosphere between the two 
greatest African colonizing powers. 

French West Africa, as we have seen, was formed 
into a distinct administrative area in 1902, and the 
military area of its hinterland colony extended as 
far east as Lake Chad. It was not until 1906, after 
the Anglo-French agreement of 1904 had been worked 
22 337 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

out in detail, that the French were able to bring 
together their Sudan and Congo spheres of influence. 
By decree of February 15, 1906, French Congo was 
formed, with four provinces: the Gabun colony, 
the Middle Congo colony, the Ubangi-Shari-Chad 
colony, and the Chad military region. In 1910, 
French Congo became French Equatorial Africa. 

Gabun is a coast colony on the Atlantic, just south 
of the Gulf of Guinea and taking in the bend of which 
Cape Lopez is the western point. Its northern 
frontier is the very narrow strip of Kamerun that 
separates French territory from Spanish Guinea 
(Rio Muni). The Gabun River, really a deep bay, 
from which the colony takes its name, is in the extreme 
north. At its mouth is Libreville, ^ the capital. The 
principal river, which runs for several hundred miles 
through the heart of the colony, and empties into 
Nazareth Bay, to the north of Cape Lopez, is the 
Ogowe. Here Port Lopez has been established. 
On the coast at the south, French territory is 
separated from Belgian Congo for a short distance 
by a little Portuguese enclave around Kabinda 
Bay. 

Gabun, like other west coast colonies, is a heritage 
to France from, the days of Louis Philippe. Libre- 

^ Libreville, as its name indicates, was, like Freetown in Sierra 
Leone, originally a settlement of emancipated slaves. When the 
intercontinental slave trade of Africa was destroyed in the middle of 
the nineteenth century, the principal part in this great work was 
played by the British and French fleets. It is natural that the 
influence of the two Occidental Powers along the Atlantic coast of 
Africa, exercised altruistically in this humanitarian movement, 
should have resulted in precious political and territorial advantages. 

338 



FRANCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA 

ville was founded in the year after the fall of the 
Orleans dynasty, and Cape Lopez was acquired 
during the Second Empire. The interior of the 
Gabun was made known to the children of my gener- 
ation in English-speaking countries by the books 
and lectures of Paul du Chaillu. The hinterland of 
Gabun and the territory of the Middle Congo Colony 
were won by explorers in the late seventies and early 
eighties. 

Inland, the Middle Congo colony occupies the 
north bank of the Congo for some hundreds of miles. 
Its capital, Brazzaville, which is directly opposite 
Leopoldville in Belgian Congo, is named for the 
intrepid French explorer who reached the Congo 
at this point thirty-five years ago, and prevented 
Stanley from occupying both banks of the river. 
Since the Agadir crisis was compounded with Ger- 
many, two spurs of territory reaching the Congo at 
Gonga and Mongumba, together with a substantial 
bit of hinterland, were ceded by France to Germany 
on September 28, 1912. These two projections of the 
Kamerun spoil the continuity of French territory 
from the Sudan to the Atlantic. 

The third colony, Ubangi-Shari-Chad, comprises 
the regions north of the Belgian Congo, east of 
Kamerun and west of the Bahr-el-Ghazal province 
of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Darfur is north 
of the eastern portion of the colony. The Ubangi 
River forms the larger portion of the boundary with 
Belgium. At the beginning of the sharp bend in 
this river, which is the most important northern 
tributary of the Congo, has been established the 

339 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

capital, Bangui. In the colony are the headwaters 
of the River Shari, which flows into Lake Chad. 
The fourth province of French Equatorial Africa 
is known as the Chad Military Territory. It forms 
the connection by land with the other portions of 
France's African empire, and has been won since 
the Sudan Convention of 1899. Kanem, northeast 
of Lake Chad, was conquered in 1903. Immediately 
afterwards, most of the sultans of Wadai accepted 
the French Protectorate. Wadai is the southern 
and largest of the three provinces of the Sudan the 
British consented in the Convention to regard as 
French. It lies between Lake Chad and Darfur. 
The other two provinces, Borku and Tibesti, are 
between the Sahara and the Libyan deserts, on the 
western border of Egypt, and southeast of Tripoli. 
Since the definite French occupation of Abeshr, the 
principal city of Wadai, in 19 10, the French have 
sent many expeditions into Borku and Tibesti, as a 
part of the general plan of pacifying and keeping 
patrolled the Sahara Desert. We have spoken else- 
where of the Turkish activity in the last years of 
Abdul Hamid and the first two years of the Young 
Turk regime, which brought the Turks and the 
French into conflict in the oases between Tripoli 
and Lake Chad.^ France established her rights in 
the hinterland of Tripoli just in time to confront 
Italy with a fait accompli. The Italian attempt 
to conquer Tripoli drew from the desert the most 
warlike of the tribesmen, and turned the attention of 
the Senussi towards a new foe. Since the Italians 

^ See above, p. 121. 

340 



FRANCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA 

went to Tripoli, the Senussi have directed their 
principal efforts against them. 

France, while freed of pressure in the Lake Chad 
region, had not yet been able to call Borku and 
Tibesti more than a "sphere of influence" when the 
European War broke out. In the Wadai also, the 
French were not altogether masters of the situation. 
The Governor-General of Equatorial Africa com- 
plained that he had less than five thousand men for 
policing a country four times as large as France, 
while his colleague of West Africa could count on 
more than ten thousand troops. Events in' Morocco 
led to the diminishing of military effort in 19 13. 
Sultan Ali of Darfur never accepted the Anglo- 
French Convention of 1899. He paid a nominal 
tribute to the British as long as Khartum let him 
alone. Against the French, he was continually 
plotting. AH helped the Senussi in their attack 
against Egypt in 191 5, and in the spring of 19 16 
he came out boldly for the Turks and Germans, 
declaring that he must obey the Khalif's injunction 
to enter "the Holy War." The French garrisons in 
Wadai had been depleted to conquer and hold Kam- 
erun. Serious trouble for the French was averted 
only by the prompt action of Sir Reginald Wingate, 
Governor- General of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 
who sent an expedition into Darfur to occupy 
El-Fashr in May, 191 6. 

In 1 90 1, a commercial convention was made 
between France and the Congo Free State. France 
was dependent, for the outlet of her trade, upon the 
Belgian Railway, and has remained so throughout 

341 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the period of our survey. Direct French communi- 
cation to the coast will not be possible until the 
railway from Brazzaville on the Congo to Loango, on 
the Atlantic, is completed. 

In the development of her Congo territories, 
France has had to face the same conditions, and 
has made the same mistakes, as the Belgians in Cen- 
tral Africa. Although it is not pleasant to do so, 
it is necessary to deal here rather fully with problems 
and abuses : for a review of European colonization in 
Africa in the twentieth century would not be com- 
plete without touching upon weaknesses that have 
arisen in French administration. It is only fair to 
say, however, that the criticism can be directed 
against European colonization in general in Central 
Africa. French maladministration is merely the 
specific illustration. The sources of information, 
except in the question of the effect of the concession- 
naire system upon the open door principle in trade, 
are wholly French, and of unimpeachable authority.^ 
^ At the time the convention with Belgium was 
made, British firms claimed that they were being 
excluded from the possibility of developing their 
trade in the French Congo in exactly the same way as 
in the Belgian Congo. The whole country was being 
farmed out to French concessionnaires in violation 

^See E. D. Morel's British Case against the French Cojigo, and 
Fdicien Challaye's Le Congo Franqais (Alcan, Paris, 1909). M. 
Challaye was a member of the mission sent by the French Govern- 
ment in 1905, under M. de Brazza, to investigate conditions in the 
French Congo. His volume is invaluable eye-witness testimony, 
and is written carefully and judicially. I have borrowed constantly 
from it in this chapter. 



FRANCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA 

of the Berlin Act. When representations were 
made to France, as the result of complaints from 
British subjects to the Foreign Office, Paris an- 
swered to London that the Berlin Act had become, 
in respect to monopolies at least, a dead letter. 
Arbitration, however, was agreed upon. But the 
concessionnaire system had become so deeply rooted 
that it was found difficult to remedy its abuses, both 
from the standpoint of foreign traders and of native 
victims, without a radical administrative reorganiza- 
tion. Fimds as well as the intelligent and independ- 
ent personnel for accomplishing this were lacking. 

In 1904, an official investigating commission, 
under de Brazza, the famous explorer, who had 
opened up the Congo to France back in Stanley's 
time, started from Libreville, and made an extensive 
tour of the three French colonies. What they found 
was so disheartening that M. de Brazza declared 
that he would never have explored this country, 
and brought it under European control, had he 
realized what suffering and disaster European pene- 
tration was going to bring to the natives. Worn out 
by fever and broken-hearted, M. de Brazza died 
before his mission was completed. 

At Libreville, after fifty years, there was not 
even a wharf, and the total European population 
amoimted to sixty men and five women. The original 
inhabitants of the coast country, from whom the 
colony took its name, were rapidly dying out, killed 
by the vices introduced by Europeans. The natives 
of the Gabun hinterland declared that the conces- 
sions companies, who had them at their mercy, 

343 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

were constantly putting up the price of the objects 
they sold them. The companies demanded always 
rubber, rubber, and more rubber. Trade was in kind, 
and the natives had no appeal from the arbitrary 
exactions of their taskmasters. Since taxes were 
not being used for the development of the country, 
but to enrich the companies and compel the natives 
to work for the concessionnaires, taxes were regarded 
as fines. To escape the taxes, the inhabitants of 
Gabun abandoned the edges of the river and hid 
their villages in the jungle. A decree of the Governor 
in 1904 forbade immigration to Kamerun, where 
the natives liked to go, because they were paid 
there for their labor. 

At Loango, prosperity had been killed by the loss 
of through trade, which went to Belgium after the 
Free State Railway was built. The Loangos had 
the attitude of the Gabunese towards taxation. 
They would be willing to pay taxes, they declared, if 
only the money were used to give them roads and 
bridges and especially schools. But they paid, when 
they were compelled to, and got nothing in return. 
They were not allowed to leave the country. The 
concessionnaires recruited labor at Loango by force. 
The laborers were called "volunteers," and were 
given "contracts." When the de Brazza mission 
interrogated them, it was discovered that they had 
been taken inland "without knowing where they were 
going or what work they were going to undertake. 
They believed they w^ere engaged for a year. They 
ask us with anxiety how many moons they must 
still remain here. The work is too hard and the 

344 



FRANCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA 

food insufficient ; many of them are of heartsickening 
thinness. Their contract and pay books, which, 
according to the law, should be in their possession, 
are in the hands of their white foreman. What good 
would it do if they did have them? They do not 
know how to read. Most of these books, which 
ought to be vised by a government official, have no 
signature. All contain this stipulation: 'The con- 
tract will be cancelled, with no indemnity for cancel- 
lation, when, for whatever motive, the laborer 
renders no more services to the company.' Warning 
to those who are accidentally injured or who fall ill!'* 
At Bangui, the commission found that the fore- 
man of the companies exercised pressure upon the 
blacks to bring in rubber by seizing their women 
and children, and holding them as hostages until 
the allotted quota was brought to the company's 
compound. In 1904, at Bangui, one concessions 
company, which made a practice of this barbarous 
hostage system, shut up in a small hut sixty-eight 
women and children, without air and food and 
water enough to keep them alive. The crime hap- 
pened to be discovered by a young French physi- 
cian. He demanded their release. Forty-five women 
and two children were found dead. Only thirteen 
women and eight children were still alive. Some 
of them died in spite of all the exertions of their 
liberator. The case could not have been unique. 
It was discovered only because it happened on the 
path of travelers. The Government of the French 
Congo failed to take action because "proof was 
lacking," and the official who ordered the imprison- 

345 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

merit of these hostages was soon after promoted from 
Bangui to Brazzaville. This is a statement of fact, 
substantiated on the ground by personal investi- 
gation. It happened only twelve years ago, and is 
a crime of the twentieth century. 

In the High Shari, which is conceded to a company, 
at the end of 1904, the chief of the Bibigri tribe was 
arrested on the ridiculous charge of obstructing "the 
liberty of commerce, " because he would not or could 
not make his people bring in the amount of rubber 
arbitrarily imposed upon his tribe by the concession- 
naires. A month later he died in prison. To avenge 
his death, the Bibigris revolted, and killed nearly 
thirty of the black foremen, employees of the com- 
pany, who were oppressing them. The troops who 
went to put down the revolt found in the houses of the 
natives the skulls of the foremen, filled with balls 
of rubber. "It was a striking sym.bol," wrote the 
scribe of the de Brazza mission, "well expressing the 
real cause of these cruel and awful revolts. " 

It was at Dakar, on his way back to France, that 
M. de Brazza died. His friend and companion 
wrote : 

"The book one ought to re-read in the French 
Congo is the Inferno of Dante. All my life, I shall 
preserve the sadness of having seen, with my own 
eyes, a real hell. M. de Brazza saw a despotic ad- 
ministration, eager to establish badly calculated or 
vexatious taxes, to demand their payment by brutal 
procedures, to frighten natives, and to drive them 
from European control instead of bringing them under 
our administration by protecting them. He saw the 

346 



FRANCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA 

concessions companies, rapacious and cynical, trying 
to reconstitute anew slavery, to impose upon the 
blacks, by threat and violence, insufficiently remuner- 
ated work, instead of trying to attract them by free 
and loyal commerce. He saw how officials, by fre- 
quent brutalities, had fallen to the level of the most 
barbarous negroes. He knew in all its details the 
odious history of the High Shari: forced porterage, 
camps of hostages, razzias, and massacres. From 
these terrible discoveries, M. de Brazza suffered in 
his heart. This heroic sorrow, this sublime sadness, 
spent his strength and hastened his end. He said 
in dying: ^The French Congo must not become a new 
Belgian Mongala.' " 

In 1905, at Brazzaville, occurred the trial of two 
French officials of the High Shari for "voluntary 
homicide." There were several serious charges 
against them of murder of natives in their jurisdiction. 
It had taken two years to bring them to justice, and 
this was the first time white men had been prosecuted 
in a serious way before a French civil court. Mes- 
sieurs Toque and Gaud were brought to trial for 
crimes committed at Fort Crampel in 1903. There 
had been many rumors in connection with many 
officials. But evidence was hard to get. Probably 
nothing would have been done in this case, had it 
not been for the energy and insistence of Lieutenant- 
Colonel Gouraud, commandant of the MiHtary Terri- 
tory of Chad, who was determined to put a stop to 
the evil reputation France was getting among the 
natives of his jurisdiction because of the crimes of 
regularly commissioned colonial officials in Shari, 
where, according to one of the accused, Toque, 

347 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

every consideration of humanity had to be subordi- 
nated to the necessity of getting porters to carry 
rubber. "It was a general massacre we had to 
institute in order to make the service run," said 
Toque. Against Toque, the charges were: shooting 
a Moruba porter, who refused to carry burdens; 
ordering killed with a bayonet a native chief; drown- 
ing a porter who stole cartridges by having him 
thrown into the Nana Falls. Gaud was accused of: 
throwing a woman into the River Gribingui ; beating 
men and boys; boiling a negro chief's head, and 
compelling his servant to drink the water after- 
wards; and other crimes of a revolting nature. 
Together the two men were accused of various 
unbelievable tortures, causing the death of several 
natives, and of tying a dynamite cartridge to a 
man's head, and blowing his head off. 

All the crimes were not proved. The court went 
on the principle laid down by Dr. Cureau, in a study 
on the psychology of negro races: "The testimony of 
the negro in justice offers absolutely no guarantee. "^ 
But from the confessions of the accused and from 
testimony of white witnesses, the two cases of throw- 
ing a man into the Nana Falls and of blowing off 
another man's head with a stick of dynamite were 
proved. Toque and Gaud were condemned each to 
five years imprisonment. 

The condemnation provoked a great deal of 
astonishment and indignation among the Europeans 
of Brazzaville. The friends and associates of the con- 
demned refused not only to shake hands with the 

^See Revue generate des sciences, July, 1904. 



FRANCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA 

judges but with those who ate with them. For 
the first time since they had been in the Congo, the 
Frenchmen and other Europeans who had sloughed 
off decency and civiHzation were reminded of the 
existence of law and order and justice. It had 
never occurred to them that a negro had rights. 
One French functionary drew distinction between 
homicide and animalicide. In his opinion, Toque 
and Gaud were merely guilty of animalicide. An- 
other young official, when the sentence was pro- 
nounced, cried out: "Are we to become naturalized 
negroes?" The military officials, however, who had 
come from the Chad district with the determination 
to see that justice was done, were highly satisfied 
with the verdict, and expressed in no uncertain terms 
their contempt of Frenchmen who could fall so low 
as to sympathize with and take the part of these de- 
generates. But Toque and Gaud had been defended 
in court by the civil governor of Brazzaville! 

For two years after the de Brazza investigation, 
there was ample confirmation of the reports of those 
who accompanied the great explorer on his last 
African trip in serious and widespread native up- 
risings. Some tribes arose en masse. Senegalese 
troops had to be used in large numbers to "pacify" 
those who had been goaded to the breaking point 
by tortiire and abuse of concessionnaires and their 
brutes of henchmen. An expedition, which started 
from Brazzaville to find a direct trade route in the 
unknown region between Lake Chad and the Congo 
basin, in order that the trade which was passing 
through Kamerun might be directed to French 

349 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

posts, learned how terrible was native hatred and 
how difBcultly bridged the chasm of native mistrust 
of the French. 

Fortunately, the revelations of the de Brazza 
mission were not without wholesome effect in Paris. 
The French Congo has not become a new Belgian 
Mongala, although it was rapidly drifting that way. 
Much has been accomplished that was needed in the 
way of reform by the establishment of a common 
central administration in 1910.^ But the evils of 
the old regime were not eradicated root and branch. 
Although greatly mitigated, they still remain. They 
always will remain in the French Congo until an 
abundant official class, recruited from the upper 
classes, is found to administer the country in the 
interest of the natives, instead of in the interest of 
their exploiters. 

The blame that attaches to France and to her 
Colonial Ministry is in allowing the French flag to 
wave, and in assuming the responsibility of govern- 
ment, over regions where concessions companies 

^New arrangements were made in 19 10 with the chief concession- 
naires. They were on the basis of cultivation or other actual use 
of the land. The companies were permitted to select their blocks 
of land, with definite limits. The title would revert to them in 
1920, only if during ten years there was systematic exploitation 
and development by the concessionnaires themselves. All rubber 
concessions were to revert to the state in 1920, and after that time 
leases would be renewed yearly, subject to the production and conduct 
of the companies. Rights were recognized of natives to their 
own villages and to their local customs, and to all the produce of 
their own lands. They might also collect forest produce from 
undeveloped lands. Contracts between chiefs and companies for 
tribal labor were subject to the approval of the Governor-General. 



FRANCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA 

are given uncontrolled power to exploit the blacks 
for their own benefit; and then in sending troops 
to punish the natives for doing what Frenchmen 
would do under similar circumstances, protecting 
their wives and children from dishonor, torture, and 
death. What a mockery to free the negroes of Cen- 
tral Africa from the slave trader, and then turn them 
over to soulless corporations with a thousand times 
more power to bully and drive and massacre than 
Tippoo Tib and his ilk! There is blame, also, for 
putting power in the hands of Senegalese brutes, 
and invariably supporting them in the exercise of 
that power. Most of all, there is blame in allowing 
France and Christian civilization to be represented 
by officials who would hardly find a place in the 
mother country outside of a jail. In the Congo 
region, what one could say to Portugal and Belgium 
during the first decade of the nineteenth century, one 
could say to France: If you are not prepared to as- 
sume the government of this country, in accordance 
with the standards of justice you insist upon in France, 
you ought not to have undertaken the government. 

Washing dirty linen is a painful and unpleasant 
business. It is an unprofitable business, also, unless 
it serves some good purpose. I would not feel justi- 
fied in speaking of the sad maladministration in the 
French Central African colonies, if I were not able at 
the same time to suggest the reasons for this malad- 
ministration, and the way in which it can be remedied. 

Central Africa has an evil effect upon the moral 
sense of the white man, when left too much alone or 
entrusted with the exercise of uncontrolled power. 

351 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

He becomes lazy, careless, neurasthenic, credulous. 
In continual contact with the brutality of the blacks, 
and their hopeless degradation, out of touch with the 
civilization whose magic is in the ability it gives man 
to dominate his natural bestial instincts by a culti- 
vated spiritual control, the European quickly de- 
generates. He becomes as careless of human life as 
those around him. He commits acts of cruelty with- 
out a qualm, the remembrance of which haunts him 
continually years later when he returns to civili- 
zation. Only men of the strongest character and 
moral fiber, who have been born and raised in an 
atmosphere of culture, who have gone through the 
severe discipline of cultural education, who have 
inherited the habit of exercising authority, and who, 
when they return from their post, go by right of blood 
and ability into cultivated circles and to responsible 
positions, are fit to be entrusted with administrative 
posts in Central Africa. For this type of man alone 
is able to resist the demoralizing influences of solitude, 
degrading surroundings, and unlimited power of the 
Central Africa ofiicial. 

The British send this type of man to Africa. 
Other nations do not.^ Hence the joy of natives 

^ In his Guide Pratique de VEuropeen dans VAfrique Occidentale, 
Dr. Barot writes: "For those who have not the necessary moral force 
to endure two years of absolute continence, there is only one practi- 
cable line of conduct, temporary union with a well-chosen native 
woman. " The advantages of such a step are glowingly set forth. 
Dr. Barot declares that no wrong is done to the temporary little 
wife, for native morality is not at all severe. "The former wives of 
Europeans are very much sought after by the blacks and generally 
marry very well." See pp. 328, 330. 



FRANCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA 

under the British flag, and the misery of natives under 
other flags. 

Let it be remembered that I am not speaking of 
commissioned army officers. I am speaking of ad- 
ministrative officials in the civil service. The very 
best men of France, gentlemen in the fullest conno- 
tation of the word, have served in the French African 
army. One may ask why the French army is able 
to draw the best while French colonial civil service 
recruits from a class not in any way representative of 
the best in French Hfe. The answer is not hard to 
give. 

As I look from my study window, I see four splen- 
did boys playing in the sand. They are helping 
my children build a trench to let in the water when 
the tide comes up. In their faces, in their bearing, 
in their actions, they tell the story that only blood 
tells. Their father died just two years ago in the 
battle of the Marne. His widow said to me 
the other day, "My husband was bom to fight the 
Germans, and he spent his life in learning how to do 
it." It is not the glamour of colonial service or the 
desire to build up a new world that has sent the best 
of France into Africa in the army. They went there 
to learn how to fight the Germans, and to train sol- 
diers to fill the gaps in the French army caused by 
depopulation. They looked upon Africa as a school 
in warfare and a reservoir of warriors against the 
inevitable day. 

The Frenchman of the upper-classes, when it is 
not a question of national defense, has no desire to go 
abroad and no reason for doing so. The upper-class 
23 353 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Englishman is pushed into the exile of colonial civil 
service by reasons of caste and by the law of entail. 
The money in the family goes to the eldest son, 
and the others, not wanting to engage in trade, enter 
government service. French law requires that a 
man's money be divided equally among his children. 
Then there is the family. English fathers and moth- 
ers bring their children up with the idea that they are 
going to leave them and work out their own salva- 
tion. French fathers and mothers bring up their 
children with the idea that they are going to keep 
them with them or near them as long as they live. 
To the Englishman of the upper classes, England is a 
country to be mildly proud of but not to live in until 
one is over fifty, and even then not all the time. To 
the Frenchman, France is a country never to be left 
except under dire necessity. To the Englishman, 
London is a city to visit occasionally between pro- 
tracted week ends, but never to live in if you want to 
make a reputation for yourself. To the Frenchman, 
reputation is made only in Paris. 

A very keen French critic once told Jules Ferry 
that Indo-China and Madagascar and the Congo 
would never be distinctively French, and would 
never bring glory or profit to France. "Why?" 
asked the Colonial Prophet. "Too far from Paris, " 
was the laconic reply. 



354 



CHAPTER XVIII 

EUROPEAN RIVALRY IN MOROCCO BEFORE 
ALGECIRAS 

THE portion of Africa nearest Europe and 
America, and adjoining the most highly de- 
veloped European colony in Africa, was, at 
the opening of the twentieth century, the most back- 
ward, the most unknown, the most inaccessible. 
Morocco, on account of the rivalry of the Powers, 
remained outside European "spheres of influence" 
until Great Britain and France compounded colonial 
differences in the famous Agreement of 1904. In the 
decade from 1904 to 19 14, Morocco was "taken over" 
by France, but not until after Europe had been led 
from one international crisis through another to the 
catastrophe of a world war. Commercial antago- 
nism, irreconciliable political aims, and traditional 
hatreds could have brought the Great Powers to a 
twentieth century war without Morocco. But with- 
out Morocco, war might have been deferred and the 
alignment of the Powers might have been different. 
The student of history may not be able to find in his 
studies positive assurance of the avoidability of war. 
But he certainly finds, even in contemporary history, 
positive assurance of the impossibility of predicting, 

355 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

from decade to decade, which nations are to be 
allies and which are to be enemies. ^ Of this truth, 
Morocco is the present-day illustration. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, British 
and Germans were working together against France 
in Morocco. The British were more vigorous than 
the Germans in their opposition to the desire of 
France to repeat what she had done in Tunis by 
getting possession of the other ''key to her house. "^ 
The British contention, frequently put into print, 
was that the independence of the Shereefian Empire 
must be upheld at all costs. Britain was the pro- 

^ The Crown Prince of Japan received a tremendous ovation in 
Petrograd during the last week of September, 1916. Ten years ago 
he would have been lynched. Turkish troops are fighting with 
Bulgarians against Servians in Macedonia. Three years ago, 
Bulgarians and Servians were fighting against Turks. Italy and 
Rumania are in the field against their allies of yesterday. A Greek 
army corps recently sought protection of the Bulgarians against 
Prance and England at Cavalla. The Sheriflf of Mecca is fighting 
the Khalif of the Moslem world. The most popular contemporary 
Breton song contains a verse in which England is treated as the enemy 
of France at sea. The British army now occupies Normandy, with 
bases at Rouen and Havre, as a friendly army come to defend France. 
Not many years ago Guy de Maupassant put the following words 
into the mouth of a physician at Gisors in one of his most famous 
stories: "In spite of my hatred against the German and my desire 
for vengeance, I do not detest him, I do not hate him by instinct 
as I hate the Englishman, the real enemy, the hereditary enemy, the 
natural enemy of the Norman. For the Englishman has passed 
over this soil inhabited by my ancestors, has pillaged it and ravaged 
it twenty times, and my aversion for this perfidious race has been 
transmitted to me, with my life, from my father. " See Le Rosier 
de Mme. Husson, in the collection En Famille (OUendorf, Paris), 
p. 83. 

^ Speech of Jules Ferry on Tunisian policy in Chamber of Depu- 
ties, November 5, 1881. 

356 



EUROPEAN RIVALRY IN MOROCCO 

tector of weak nations against the strong. What 
Emperor WilHam said at Tangier in 1905, and what 
the German press wrote at the time of Algeciras and 
Agadir, is substantially what has been said in more 
than one Speech from the Throne of Queen Victoria 
and what the British press wrote before the bargain 
with France. When one reads what was going on in 
Morocco fifteen years ago, the pages consecrated by 
English writers of the present time to German in- 
trigues inAfrica are amusing and amazing reading. In 
their indignation against Germany and in the accusa- 
tion that Germany has tried to "block the legitimate 
aspirations of other nations, " as one eminent author- 
ity puts it, they indict, by the same token, their own 
policy in more than one part of Africa, as well as the 
policy of Prance, now their ally but fifteen years ago 
their bitter enemy. 

As will be seen in this chapter and the chapters that 
follow it, I have deep sympathy and warm admira- 
tion for French policy in Morocco and British policy 
in Egypt. These two countries are far better off 
under British and French rule than they would be if 
Britain and France had stayed out. But I have no 
patience with insincerity in recording historical 
events and with the cant that sees only right in 
what one does oneself or what one's friend does, and 
only wrong when the identical thing is done by an 
enemy. We shall have a lasting peace on the day we 
recognize that human nature is the same the world 
over (and in particular diplomatic nature). If 
things have been done differently, and have brought 
different results, it is because special influences have 

357 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

been at work in one case, or with one nation, that 
were lacking in another case and with another nation. 
During the five years preceding the Agreement of 
1904, France, thwarted at Fashoda and converted to 
the necessity of a constructive and logical African 
program, began her effort to secure the Moroccan 
"key to her house. " The most effective opposition 
to her attempts to gain control of the Moorish army, 
to obtain harbor and mining concessions, and to 
secure a "rectification" of the Algerian frontier, was 
that of the British Legation. The German Legation 
was a very poor second. Britain and Germany, 
though their dual and common influence was suffi- 
cient to ruin the French program, were not able to 
obtain advantages for themselves. Much as she 
welcomed Germany's aid against France, Britain 
did not want a naval rival anywhere on the African 
coast opposite Gibraltar. Germany thought Egypt 
and Malta and Cyprus and Gibraltar were enough 
for Britain in the Mediterranean. France had a 
sincere desire, and a very good reason, to see peace 
and order and economic prosperity brought to Mo- 
rocco. The Anglo-German policy paralyzed every 
effort, both of Moroccan and French authorities, to 
improve political and economic conditions in the 
northwestern corner of Africa. British policy in 
Morocco before 1904 is similar to that in Persia and 
Turkey, the two other independent Moslem states. 
Reforms that might bring political and economic 
strength were opposed on purely selfish grounds, and 
with no thought or care for the interests of the nations 
used as pawns in the diplomatic game. This fact is 

358 



EUROPEAN RIVALRY IN MOROCCO 

irrefutable. Before April 8, 1904, the British Min- 
ister, advising the Sultan of Morocco as a friend 
whose interest he had at heart, urged him to resist 
French advances and combat French influences. 
After April 8, 1904, he told the Sultan that he must 
do what the French said. The British Minister at 
Teheran did exactly the same thing with the Persians 
in regard to Russia before and after the Agreement 
of 1907. 

The present dynasty of Morocco was founded in 
1660 by Reshid, a descendant of the Prophet, who 
began his career at Talifet, in the south- near the 
desert; subjected the tribes of Udja and Riff; and 
finally established his capital at Fez. His recogni- 
tion in the region of Udja marked the final disappear- 
ance of Ottoman authority in Morocco. Reshid 
never became sovereign of the whole of Morocco : nor 
did his siiccessors. One cannot understand recent 
events in Morocco, unless he keeps constantly in 
mind the nature of sovereignty in the Shereefian 
Empire. There are three differences between the 
Moroccan conception of the state and ours : 

1. The Sultan's authority depends upon his 
recognition by other religious chiefs, who are, like 
himself, descendants of the Prophet. There is a 
traditional right of blood but not of primogeniture. 

2. The state is not a geographical conception. 
The Sultan rules over tribes, not over territories. 

3. By no means all the tribes recognize the 
authority of the Sultan. Some never have recog- 
nized his authority. Morocco is divided into two 
distinct sections: the Makhzen and the Siha. The 

359 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Makhzen are the tribes who recognize the authority 
of the Sultan, and the Siba are those who do not. 
The Makhzen and the Siba are all mixed up in differ- 
ent parts of the country. 

These three facts show how absurd was the Anglo- 
German contention that Morocco must not "lose 
her independence, " and the French contention that 
the Sultan was responsible for the actions of all the 
tribes within the region our maps call Morocco. 
Before the -British sold out the Shereefian Empire to 
France, the Sultan could always play one power off 
against another, and his anomalous "government" 
was allowed to exist. When France got a free hand, 
and Great Britain stood behind her by preventing 
Germany from assuming the traditional role she her- 
self had abdicated, the Sultan was brought face to 
face for the first time v/ith the necessity of represent- 
ing geographical Morocco. He was asked to accept 
responsibility for and to act for tribes that did not 
recognize his authority and had not recognized the 
authority of his ancestors. 

Spain and France, neighbors of this country of 
anarchy, had wars with Morocco in the nineteenth 
century. In both cases, England ^interfered to pre- 
vent them from securing the amelioration of the evils 
on account of which they had fought. The Moroccan 
question became international in 1880, when Eng- 
land and Spain, in an attempt to prevent France from 
taking the measures that were necessary (and which 
she had treaty right to take) to protect her Algerian 
frontier from tribal raids, called the Madrid Confer- 
ence. Although France was vigorously supported 

360 




SKETCH MAP 
SHOWING THE 

GERMAN- FRENCH 

BOUNDARIES 

1912 



EUROPEAN RIVALRY IN MOROCCO 

by the German delegates, British opposition com- 
pelled her to give up her ancient treaty rights in 
Morocco. The foundation of the internationaliza- 
tion of Morocco was laid. British diplomacy had 
only one thought, to prevent France or Spain from 
getting a fortified foothold opposite Gibraltar. In 
all the Morocco agreements the British Foreign Office 
has invariably insisted that France and Spain bind 
themselves not to follow the British example of 
putting fortifications in the Strait of Gibraltar. The 
fact of Great Britain, perched on the big rock in 
Spanish territory, forbidding Spain to fortify the 
African side of the strait, illustrates the world-old 
axiom that a nation's territorial rights are founded 
on force and maintained by force. The British took 
Gibraltar by force. They are there only by right of 
force. They will stay there as long as they have the 
force to defend Gibraltar. And as long as they have 
the force they will prevent others from imitating 
their example on the African side of the Strait of 
Gibraltar or anywhere else in the world. 

British diplomacy anticipated in 1844 and i860 
the German attempts of 1906 and 191 1, the difference 
being that the British succeeded where the Germans 
failed. In 1844, Great Britain prevented France 
from extending her protectorate over Morocco. In 
i860, she prevented Spain from extending her pro- 
tectorate over Morocco. Both times she would 
have fought, if the rival had not given way. Several 
times the British tried to extend their protectorate 
over Morocco, and would have fought any Power 
that opposed the project. The British flag does not 

361 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

wave over Morocco now, only because Sir Evan 
Smith could not persuade the father of the present 
sultan to accept a protectorate/ and the London 
Cabinet did not dispose of the forces and ships that 
would be required to conquer the country. But if 
there had been extensive gold mines in the country 
to make the conquest worth while, the pourparlers 
of 1892 would probably have ended by Hassan yield- 
ing to force. 

The Moroccan crisis, which was to bring about 
momentous results for the world, began in 1901 with 
the occupation by French troops of the oasis of Twat, 
on the northern edge of the Sahara Desert in the 
undefined hinterland between Morocco and Algeria. 
When one studies the map, with the plan of French 
penetration across the Sahara and the protection of 
the Senegal-Niger Colony in mind, and considers also 
that the administrative organization of the Algerian 
hinterland was an imperative necessity for the peace 
and prosperity of Algeria and Tunis, France cannot 
be accused of wanting to provoke the Sultan or of 
infringing upon his rights. But it was unfavorably 
commented upon by France's rivals, and things were 
whispered in the ear of Abdul Aziz. In the same 
year the assassination of a French colonist of Oran 
brought an ultimatum to the Sultan, supported by 
two warships at Tangier. In spite of Anglo- German 
opposition, the Sultan made two agreements in April 
and May, 1902, which opened up the way for France 
to interfere in the internal management of Morocco. 
France and the Government of the Sultan were to 

^ Cf. Bernard's Le Maroc (Alcan, Paris, 1915) p. 316. 
362 



EUROPEAN RIVALRY IN MOROCCO 

work in accord in the frontier regions in matters 
concerning police, commerce, and customs. After 
repeated tribal raids on the frontier showed the 
inability — if not the ill will — of the Moroccan Gov- 
ernment to live up to the agreements it had made, M. 
Jonnart, Governor-General of Algeria, called Colonel 
Lyautey in 1903 to undertake the task of pacifying 
the hinterland of Oran and of making the Algerian 
"rontier secure against raids from Morocco. As 
jast as he was strict, as judicious as he was energetic, 
as cool-headed as he was enthusiastic, Colonel Ly- 
autey developed in his task diplomatic and military 
qualities that have brought him a seat in the French 
Academy, a generalship in the army, and the mission 
of making Morocco French. 

From 1 90 1, when France determined to make her 
African Empire what it could become, the French 
attitude toward Morocco was logical and justifiable. 
When Colonel Lyautey took charge of the frontier 
forces, it became energetic and unyielding. What 
France asked for she had a right to expect- — that the 
Sultan of Morocco should exercise effective control 
over the tribes that were threatening the security and 
disturbing the prosperity of Algeria and the Algerian 
hinterland, or refrain from opposing France in taking 
the necessary military measures to call the Moorish 
tribes to order. From the French point of view, the 
line of argument to justify a "violation" of the Moor- 
ish frontier was unanswerable. If Morocco meant 
a definite geographical territory, the Government of 
Morocco was responsible for what happened in that 
territory. If the Sultan answered that he 'was re- 

363 . 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

sponsible only for the acts of the Makhzen, i. e., the 
submitted tribes, France was not attacking his sover- 
eignty or his Government, v/hen she punished un- 
submitted tribes, i. e., the Siba, and occupied their 
territories. 

The difficulty of France lay not with Abdul Aziz 
and his native advisers, but with Kaid Maclean, the 
Instructor-General of the Moorish army, a Scotch 
adventurer in the pay of the British Foreign Office, ^ 
and the British Minister at Tangier. As long as 
these two men, aided by the German Minister, kept 
telling Abdul Aziz that it was his duty and his right 
to oppose the French thesis, France could be put 
before the world — even before her own people — as an 
aggressor, trying to bully the poor weak Moslem 
sovereign of the one remaining independent Moslem 
State of Africa. 

The Sultan Abdul Aziz, son and successor of Has- 
san, was an ignorant and weak-minded young man, 
who might have lasted for a lifetime as nominal ruler 
of Morocco, supporting his authority upon the re- 
ligious chiefs and expecting only homage and little 

^ Sir Harry Maclean was formerly an officer in the 59th Regiment, 
stationed at Gibraltar, who secured a temporary appointment with 
Sultan Hassan to organize his army. When he saw how nicely his 
bread was buttered in Morocco, Maclean decided to cast in his for- 
tunes with the country. He acted as tout for concession hunters 
and other grafters, who wanted to get the ear of the Sultan. He was 
the pillar of strength upon whom the British Legation at Tangier 
depended to keep French officers out of the Moorish army, and to 
block the French proposals to establish a joint Franco-Moorish 
police control over the tribes that were opposing the French admini- 
strative organization of the Algerian hinterland and the western 
Sahara. 

364 



EUROPEAN RIVALRY IN MOROCCO 

money from the Makhzen tribes. But he was in- 
capable of seeing through the European intrigues and 
of avoiding the traps that were set for him. His 
brothers and other chieftains were bribed by Euro- 
pean agents to conspire and revolt against him; the 
leaders of his army and his ministers drew subsidies 
from Tangier Legations; and tribes were instigated 
to attack him, to attack the French and the Spanish, 
and to kidnap European subjects. Nothing was 
too petty or too mean to be left undone by 
agents of European diplomatic representatives. The 
worst of all, however, was the way Abdul Aziz's 
credulity was imposed upon by concession hunters 
and merchants, who involved him in diplomatic 
controversies and in debts. Like Khedive Ismail of 
Egypt, he fell an easy prey to the European adven- 
turers that surrounded him, and with whom his 
Ministers and favorites were in connivance and 
shared ill-gotten profits. His concessions and his 
extravagances gave the Powers the opportunity to 
interfere in the domestic affairs of Morocco. Out of 
the money he borrowed, Abdul Aziz got absolutely 
nothing either for himself or for his country. During 
his reign, Morocco fell into the clutches of European 
money-lenders. But no harbors were constructed; 
no roads or railways were built; and Abdul Aziz 
never occupied himself in any way with pubUc works 
of any kind. 

Abdul Aziz's purchases were of the most foolish 
and useless and naive character. An adventurer 
interested him in photography. He bought cameras 
by the hundred, films by the thousand, and develop- 

365 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

ing materials one might say almost by the laboratory! 
He took only a few pictures, andthen gave__up photo- 
graphy, because, as he confided to a friend, he found 
it was too expensive even for a Sultan. When he 
wanted a grand piano, he was told that pianos could 
be purchased only by the dozen at fifteen hundred 
dollars apiece. He was deeply interested in moving 
pictures, and had his own agents securing the best 
films for him in Europe. Once he invited a friend 
to see King Edward's coronation in Westminster 
Abbey. It was a wretched fake, with painted back- 
ground and] third-rate actors. He told the friend 
in all seriousness that this was the only film that had 
been taken inside the Abbey, and that he had to pay 
a bribe of several hundred pounds to the Dean of 
Westminster to get his operator introduced and hidden 
in the gallery over the choir. Once, when he was 
going from Fez to Tangier, he met a caravan of 
camels carrying his latest shipment of grand pianos. 
In the pouring rain, he had one of the pianos un- 
packed and set up by the roadside. He went up to 
it, singing la-la-la. On the third la, he struck a 
key of the piano with his index finger. Then he went 
on his way to Tangier. What remains of the Stein- 
way Grand is still there by the roadside. 

The beginning of the end in Morocco came two 
years before the Anglo-French Agreement, with the 
revolt of Bu Hamara against the Sultan. In October, 
1902, Bu Hamara pretended that he was Mohammed, 
brother of Abdul Aziz and son of the late Hassan. 
He claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne and 
rallied around him the tribes who were beginning to 

366 



EUROPEAN RIVALRY IN MOROCCO 

be alarmed by the European intrigues. His policy 
was anti-European, and he asserted that Abdul Aziz 
had forfeited all rights to the throne by conspir- 
ing with the foreign infidels to the detriment of the 
Shereefian Empire. Although Mohammed was ac- 
tually alive at the time, a prisoner of his brother, the 
claims of Bu Hamara were accepted by many tribes. 
One cannot, in the absence of facts, assert that Bu 
Hamara was instigated by the French. But it is 
none the less true that his action gave to France the 
opening she had long been looking for. France pro- 
posed to send troops to Morocco to put down the 
insurrection of Bu Hamara. It was represented to 
Abdul Aziz by the British and German Ministers that 
consent to this proposition would be looked upon by 
his subjects as substantiating the very charge that 
Bu Hamara made against him. So French assist- 
ance was refused. 

Dining 1903, Morocco fell into a state of complete 
anarchy. The insiurection spread alarmingly. In 
spite of serious reverses, Abdul Aziz kept his throne. 
There was no unity among his opponents, and he 
was able to borrow money to bribe important re- 
ligious chiefs. The Government troops were not 
regularly paid. Although there was considerable 
revenue from the customs, his bribes and his indul- 
gence in personal luxuries soon plunged Abdul Aziz 
hopelessly into debt. Creditors, through their Lega- 
tions, began to press him. 

In order to obtain food for her troops at Melilla, 
Spain was compelled to acknowledge Bu Hamara as 
Sultan. It was in this region that the Pretender was 

367 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

strongest, and he had the Spanish at his mercy. 
Spain, in return for her recognition, secured from Bu 
Hamara mining concessions which were afterwards 
the subject of much discussion with France, and were 
finally disallowed. Germany and England had no 
direct interest in the revolution of Bu Hamara. For 
it affected only the district between Fez and the 
Algerian frontier. But they watched its progress 
none the less with anxiety, for they saw in the re- 
sultant anarchy an excuse for France to intervene. 

At this critical moment, the Anglo-French Agree- 
ment of April 8, 1904, was signed. France and 
Britain agreed to let each other have a free hand in 
Egypt. Abdul Aziz found himself suddenly deserted 
byXEngland. The British Minister, who had all 
along been warning him against the French and urg- 
ing him to resist their intervention, which could lead 
only to the destroying of Moorish independence, 
turned overnight the deaf ear to his appeals. The 
Sultan was] advised to make what terms he] could 
with France. Abdul Aziz could look now only to 
Germany. 

The English in Morocco were very bitter against 
their Government and just as hostile to the Entente 
Cordiale as were the Germans. Even now, more 
than a decade later, when England and France are 
united in the Great War, it is not impossible to find 
British residents of Morocco who feel still that their 
interests were sacrificed in a "deal" of international 
politics, of which the advantages to them were nil. 
For one must remember that British merchants and 
British trade have never prospered in French colo- 

368 



EUROPEAN RIVALRY IN MOROCCO 

nies. No matter what assurances have been made to 
them, the British in Morocco tell you that sooner or 
later they will labor under the same disadvantages 
of the closed door that foreigners find in Algeria, 
Tunis, Madagascar, and Indo-China. 

It is claimed by British writers that the Germans 
had no ground whatever for complaint when the 
Anglo-French Agreement about Egypt and Morocco 
was signed, and that no privileges would accrue to the 
French and British merchants and goods in the 
countries whose fate was sealed by this Agreement, 
that would not accrue equally to German merchants 
and German goods. This is not strictly true. In 
the Agreement, Great Britain protected her mer- 
chants from the contingency of French railways into 
eastern Morocco turning trade through Algerian 
ports to the sole advantage of France, by exacting a \ 
clause that British goods could travel over Algerian \ 
railways into Morocco without paying Algerian duties. \ 
The French, in return, received the same privilege ^ 
on Egyptian railways leading into the Sudan. This 
is but one instance of how an agreement of this 
character discriminates against the commerce of a 
third nation, even where the principle of the open 
door is asserted to have been maintained. If British 
merchants and residents of Morocco, and French 
merchants and residents of Egypt, protected by 
a mutual dual engagement, were bitter against the 
Agreement of 1904, is it unreasonable that Germans 
should find cause for complaint and should appeal 
to their Government to defend their interests in the 
few places still left open to them in the world? Then, 
24 369 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

too, we should never forget that however much we 
say to a foreigner that he is at home in our midst, he, 
on his side, feels a foreigner still. He is under the 
perpetual menace of a sudden change in his status, 
such as occurred in both Egypt and Morocco at the 
beginning of this war/ Even when peace is ar- 
ranged, he will feel that he has not exactly the same 
privileges and advantages that are accorded to 
merchants and traders of the nation whose flag flies 
over the territory where he is working. It is no 
argument against this to point out the success of 
Germans in British colonies: for that success has 
been largely won by greater efforts and greater ability 
in spite of unfavorable circumstances. And as 
regards French colonies, English merchants and 
traders have only to consider their own experience to 
realize why the Germans were justified in protesting 
against Morocco becoming a French colony. 

Abdul Aziz had little faith, after the desertion of 
England, in German support. It was too intangible 
— mere words — and the British Legation, untroubled 
by such a little thing as inconsistency, now began to 
urge him strongly to play up to the French. His 
inclination was to compromise with the French to 
save his throne. But he was too weak, and too afraid 
to act, to change circumstances. 

The month after the signing of the Anglo-French 
Agreement, France had an excellent opportunity to 

' The Johannesburg riots in May, 19 15, resulted in property 
damage to German firms and residents of two and a half million 
dollars. The majority of the sufferers had settled in the Transvaal 
before the British conquest. 

370 



EUROPEAN RIVALRY IN MOROCCO 

show internationally her position as "predominant 
Power." The famous Raisuli captured two Euro- 
peans, one a Greek who was a naturaHzed American, 
and the other a Britisher. Algerian police were 
landed at Tangier, and other steps taken to "pre- 
serve order" in the bandit-ridden neighborhood of 
Tangier, where order had never existed. A few 
months earlier, such a step would have been greeted 
by an indignant outcry in the London press. The 
new word of order having gone out from Downing 
Street, the "French protective measure" was sym- 
pathetically recorded and commented upon. ^ /Abdul 
Aziz avoided complications with Americans and 
British by buying the release of the prisoners from 
Raisuli, and agreeing to other conditions imposed by 
Raisuli, which amounted virtually to an abdication 
of all pretense to sovereignty in the Mediterranean 
and Gibraltar regions of Morocco. In December, 
1904, the French, alarmed by the growing anti-French 
feeling among all the different elements in Mo- 
rocco, Siba as well as Makhzen, increased their troops 
at Tangier and sent a detachment to Rabat on the 
Atlantic coast. All Europeans were ordered by their 
Consuls to leave Fez, and a French invasion of 
Morocco was predicted. 

But France still stuck to diplomacy. Bu Hamara 
and Raisuli, bitterly opposed as they were to Abdul 

^ A study of Reuter's Agency telegrams at this period shows 
how important it is for the American press to endeavor to become 
independent of London in presenting foreign 'news to the public. 
Our Associated Press gives Reuter telegrams to its subscribers with- 
out independent verification and no indication of the source. 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Aziz, might easily be led to join the Makhzen tribes 
in rallying to the Sultan's support, if the French 
precipitated matters by force. A mission was sent 
at the beginning of 1905 to Fez to urge upon the Sul- 
tan a scheme of reforming Morocco, in which France 
would be the adviser and "elder brother" of the 
Sultan. The Berber tribes, incensed against France 
for having extended her aggression from Twat into 
the Figuig region, refused to obey a summons from 
Abdul Aziz to attend a Divan to "discuss the French 
proposals. ' ' They warned Abdul Aziz against listen- 
ing to the treacherous words of the infidel. Most of 
the religious and tribal chiefs, however, assembled at 
Fez. The Divan, Hke all Oriental assemblies, was 
convoked for the purpose of assenting without discus- 
sion to the conclusion put before it by the Government. 
At this moment occurred the first German interven- 
tion, of which so much has been written. Germany 
was not a party to the Anglo-French Agreement. 
She had no reason, then, to cease suddenly, as Great 
Britain had done, her interest in preserving the 
political and territorial integrity of Morocco. On 
March 31, 1905, Kaiser Wilhelm landed at Tangier, 
sent greetings to Abdul Aziz of Morocco, and let it 
be known in no uncertain terms that he regarded 
Morocco as an independent country, and intended, 
in spite of the English defection, to continue to sup- 
port the Sultan against intrigues that were threaten- 
ing to destroy him and his country. The Kaiser's 
visit to Morocco was only for two hours, but it gave 
Abdul Aziz and his Ministers courage to resist the 
demands of the French Mission. On May 28th, the 

372 



EUROPEAN RIVALRY IN MOROCCO 

Sultan formerly rejected the French proposals, re- 
ferring to the decision of the Divan as the ground 
of their non possumus. 

The Government of the Makhzen, accepting the 
suggestion of the German Minister, proposed an in- 
ternational Conference of all the Powers to decide 
upon the status of Morocco before the world. The 
British Foreign Office refused to accept the Confer- 
ence, unless France were willing. M. Delcasse 
strongly advised the French Cabinet to refuse the 
proposal for a conference, no matter what might 
happen. His colleagues, however, fearing a- war with 
Germany for which they were not prepared and on 
an issue that was not clear to their own electorate, 
much less to the world, did not see their way clear 
to follow the Foreign Minister's advice. M. Delcasse 
resigned. This was the beginning of the actual gather- 
ing of the war clouds that were to break a decade later. 

The Conference was first set for Tangier, after 
long negotiations between the Powers and Morocco. 
During these negotiations, Abdul Aziz borrowed two 
and a half million dollars from German financiers, 
and gave to German contractors the concession for 
harbor work at Tangier. Bu Hamara continued his 
war against the Sultan, and it was believed that he 
might — ^perhaps with the connivance of the Makhzen 
— make some coup that would upset European calcu- 
lations before the Conference met. The Oriental delay 
of the Moors caused the postponement of the Confer- 
ence, and Bu Hamara's activity a change of its place of 
meeting. It was set finally for January i6, 1906, at 
Algeciras, a town on the Spanish coast near Gibraltar. 

373 



CHAPTER XIX 
FRANCE GETS MOROCCO 

THE Conference of Algeciras, and the Act 
which its delegates drew up after long and 
unedifying bickering, belongs to European 
rather than African history. I have dealt with it 
from the European standpoint, and given the main 
provisions of the Act, in an earlier volume.^ The 
Act was unsatisfactory and futile, as are all interna- 
tional compromises that do not meet issues squarely. 
Instead of establishing definitely the status and 
privileges of France and Spain in Morocco under 
international sanction, and requiring of these two 
states an absolutely restrictive pledge to abide 
loyally by the status and keep loyally within the 
privileges, France and Spain were given police powers 
that might be interpreted by either more widely 
than the Act intended, without ground for accusa- 
tion of violation of the Agreement and of breach of 
good faith. One can argue with equal force that 
it was a diplomatic defeat for Germany and a diplo- 
matic defeat for France. Had German diplomats 
been sure of popular support at home, they would 
have insisted upon a much more strict limitation 

' See my New Map of Europe, pp. 71-83. 

374 



FRANCE GETS MOROCCO 

and definition of the powers entrusted to France and 
to Spain. Had French diplomats been assured of 
British backing, they would have refused to sign 
the Act. But German pubUc opinion was not con- 
vinced of the wisdom of showing the mailed fist 
over Morocco, which interested the Germans very 
little indeed: and the new Liberal Government in 
Great Britain was not in a position to promise France 
more than "sympathy." 

Delegates left Algeciras without having accom- 
pHshed the piupose for which they had come. In 
Germany, a storm of condemnation and ridicule 
met the announcement of the "decision" of the 
Conference. Those in France who cared at all 
were determined to ignore the Act. Spain, instead 
of having clearly defined rights by international 
agreement, was left to negotiate separately with 
France. 

Germany's interests in Morocco, in spite of all 
the hubbub of the Mannesmanns and the soUcitude 
of Dr. Rosen, were sHght, potentially as well as 
actually. From the moment the Act of Algeciras 
was signed her statesmen and the Colonial Party and 
the Navy League regarded Morocco as the means of 
working upon the German electorate. They put 
forward the question of principle. Germany must 
have her place in the sun. She was not going to 
take away by force the colonies of others, but she 
was going to prevent others from extending their po- 
litical sovereignty over territories not yet "grabbed," 
without Germany's consent and without giving 
Germany "compensations" elsewhere. Morocco 

375 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

was to be used to get increased budget grants for 
the colonies, the army, and the navy. French 
statesmen and imperialists were equally alive to 
the possibility of using Morocco to work upon their 
electorate in exactly the same way. They began to 
enlighten the French nation on the value — no, more, 
the necessity — of Morocco in defending what France 
had already won and built in North Africa. They 
could put forth logically, truthfully, and tellingly 
the menace to the security and prosperity of Algeria 
and Tunis and of the recently created West Africa 
from anarchy in Morocco and a spread of Islamic 
agitation. Events since 1900 could be cited to 
prove the wisdom of having occupied Tunis, one of 
the keys of the house. Morocco, the other key, 
must also be taken. 

At the bottom of the Morocco question was the 
gulf that had been made between the two nations 
by the Treaty of Frankfort. The unity and pros- 
perity of Germany was dependent upon maintaining 
that Treaty. France would never be "France her- 
self again " until the lost provinces had been returned. 
The North African Empire, moreover, was the 
Third Republic's consolation for Alsace and Lor- 
raine. Was Germany now threatening to take that 
also from France? The fuel for keeping the Morocco 
question alive, then, was the mutual animosity 
between France and Germany. But the Germans 
did not feel as intensely as the French until the 
Morocco question proved that the British were 
standing behind the French. The present war 
had multiple causes. Morocco, however, can un- 

376 



FRANCE GETS MOROCCO 

hesitatingly be called a principal cause. On both 
sides of the Rhine, the Socialists foresaw this, and 
feared it. Before and after Agadir, they worked 
hard to prevent the catastrophe. Without the 
Balkan troubles, they might have succeeded. When 
they were taxed with lack of patriotism, they stuck 
by their guns without wavering. Only to avoid 
the shameful epithet of traitors did they finally 
weaken and give in. When they were opposing an 
aggressive colonial policy, increase of standing army, 
increase of navy, and the huge budget estimates of 
latter years for shot and shell and cannon, the Social- 
ists believed they were combating chauvinism and 
not patriotism. In England, also, independent 
thinkers, advanced Radicals, and labor leaders 
fought jingoism, and sustained the thesis that war is 
the spontaneous combustion that occurs when materials 
for making it are gathered. In the midst of the 
conflict, Socialists and Radicals and dreamers are 
anathematized. Events, they are told, have proved 
the folly of their thesis. The roar of the gathered 
materials drowns their answer. But will not the 
historian give them reason? 

Would Germany have been satisfied in the long 
run, if France had abided loyally by the provisions 
of the Act of Algeciras? Did German intrigues in 
Morocco induce, if not compel, France to refuse to 
abide by the provisions of the Act? These vital 
questions are answered by the polemicists^ in a 

^ There are polemicists among European writers only since 1906, 
The best independent discussion of Algeciras and the years of ten- 
sion following it are found in Arthur Bullard's The Diplomacy of 

377 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

totally contradictory manner. Algeciras was a 
defeat for both France and Germany, as every com- 
promise is a defeat for those who are advocating 
opposite solutions. Germany wanted the complete 
independence of the Shereefian Empire, and the 
refusal to acknowledge superior or "particular" 
interests of any Power or Powers. France wanted 
the free hand that she afterwards boldly took. 
The Powers signed an Act which, if the letter had 
been taken, would have prevented France from 
inheriting Morocco. On the other hand, the par- 
ticular interests of France in Morocco were acknow- 
ledged by the Powers. 

Sultan Abdul Aziz resented keenly the Conference 
at Algeciras. His feeling about the gratuitous 
assumption of the Powers to the right to decide the 
destinies of his Empire were shared by every religious 
and political chief in Morocco. There was no 
formidable and united resistance on the part of the 
Moors and Berbers to repudiate the Act. But, 
just as has happened in other Moslem lands when 
Europe took advantage of weakness, anti-infidel 
feeling was aroused. There had not been before 
Algeciras opposition to Europeans on religious 
grounds. Intelligent Moors realized that Morocco 
must fall under European influence. But they 
determined to postpone the evil day when their 
habits and usages of centuries would be rudely up- 



the Great War, a notable book that well deserves the careful study 
of students of contemporary history. Mr. BuUard has a better 
first hand knowledge of Morocco than any other American writer. 



FRANCE GETS MOROCCO 

set by the imposition of an alien and infidel yoke. 
Europeans who believe that Moslem impotence and 
fatalistic acquiescence to foreign domination means 
indifference sadly delude themselves. The delusion 
may some day bring disastrous results. For the 
people whom they rule are not reconciled to the 
humiliation of being a subject race. I have seen 
at close range in many countries what is called 
Moslem fanaticism. I believe firmly that this 
miscalled fanaticism is not due to religion. Moslems 
hate Christians because they believe that Christians 
have taken advantage of their political weakness. 
They resent our assumption of superiority, and await 
with burning eagerness the day when they are able 
to strike, and strike to kill. Their impotence is due 
to their inability to understand the meaning of 
solidarity. But those who live in Islamic countries 
are never free from the shadow of the menace of an 
uprising. 

Had they been able to unite in action, as they 
were united in spirit, the Moors could undoubtedly 
have presented so formidable a barrier to French 
penetration that France would have hesitated to 
undertake what she had in mind. But Abdul Aziz 
was not the man who could rally around his throne 
tribes that had never acknowledged his authority, 
and that were traditionally hostile to each other as 
well as to the Makhzen. The internal condition 
of Morocco made impossible internal reform. We 
must not forget that even if the French had been 
imbued with good-will and the best intentions in 
the world toward Abdul Aziz and his government, 

379 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

they realized that treating with him as responsible 
sovereign of the whole country would have been 
much like President Wilson treating with Carranza 
when Huerta and Villa were in the field. Bu Hamara 
was still powerful. Raisuli was master of the 
Tangier district, and at the end of 1906, Abdul Aziz's 
brother, Hafid, rebelled against him with the inten- 
tion of deposing him. Abdul Aziz had sent a repre- 
sentative to Tangier to negotiate "practical measures 
of reform" with the Ministers of all the Powers, 
ignoring the special position of France. But the 
Europeans in the coast ports were under French 
and Spanish protection, and Abdul Aziz could 
put in the field an army of only three thousand 
men. 

In January, 1907, Abdul Aziz appealed to the 
Tangier Legation for a loan to maintain his forces 
against Hafid, Raisuli, and Bu Hamara. In March, 
after a French physician had been assassinated and 
the British Consular Agency attacked at Marakesh, 
France crossed the Rubicon. The Ujda district 
on the Algerian frontier was occupied. Events 
moved fast. When Abdul Aziz issued an edict 
calling upon the people to remain quiet, and pro- 
tested to Europe against the occupation of Ujda as 
a violation of all treaties, Hafid was proclaimed 
Sultan at Marakesh. European control of customs 
was established to protect the creditors of Abdul 
Aziz. This led to an anti-European outbreak at 
Casablanca, a port on the Atlantic between Rabat 
and Mazaghan. France promptly sent cruisers to 
bombard Casablanca, and landed three thousand 

380 



FRANCE GETS MOROCCO 

troops to occupy the city on August 9th. ^ Moorish 
attacks against this expeditionary force necessitated 
a vigorous French campaign in the hinterland. At 
the same time, General Lyautey was given full 
authority from Paris to use the French forces in 
Gran to repress the lawless Moors on the western 
frontier, who were trying to dislodge the French 
from Ujda. The French occupation had begun. 

The complete anarchy that reigned throughout 
1908 demonstrated the hopelessness of Morocco 
existing in any other state than as a country from 
which Europe was completely barred or in which a 
European administration controlled the entire ma- 
chinery of government, with full political and mili- 
tary powers. Abdul Aziz and Hafid were fighting 

^ Much was said and written at the time about the cruelty of the 
French in the bombardment of Casablanca, the occupation of the 
city, and the subsequent campaign. German and English residents 
of Casablanca, who saw commercial disaster for themselves in the 
French occupation, were assiduous in giving circulation to these 
stories, just as four years later the foreign residents of Tripoli sent 
out blood-curdUng stories of Italian atrocities. Women and child- 
ren certainly were killed in the bombardment and subsequently. 
The testimony I have gathered from eye-witnesses is conflicting, 
as it always is in such cases. Nothing is more difficult to get at 
than the exact truth of atrocities to non-combatants in a military 
expedition. Soldiers get out of hand. Much suffering is unavoid- 
able. But that the military authorities do not try their level best 
to prevent excesses is improbable. During his march north from 
Reggio to Naples, Garabaldi had to order the execution of some of 
his bravest Red Shirts. He remarked at the time that the officers 
of invading armies were rarely responsible for the murder and pillage 
and theft of their troops, and that they ought always to be given 
the benefit of the doubt. Practically the same thing was said to 
me by General Chaffee, who commanded the American army at 
Tien Tsin. 

381 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

for the sultanate of the Makhzen. Bu Hamara 
remained an independent usurper in the Riff. Rai- 
suli was supreme in the neighborhood of Tangier. 
France had to fight hard to maintain the foothold 
she had gained in Morocco. The Riff tribes were 
becoming a serious menate to Spain on the Mediter- 
ranean coast. Abdul Aziz and Hafid both appealed 
for French aid. After Hafid occupied Fez and 
defeated the loyal army in August, Abdul Aziz took 
refuge with the French. Germany then came to the 
support of Hafid. 

The international — or rather Franco-German — 
tension over Morocco was brought to fever heat 
by the Casablanca incident. Five members of the 
Foreign Legion, three of them Germans, who were 
in the French garrison occupying Casablanca, de- 
serted and took refuge in the German Consulate. 
The three Germans demanded repatriation. A 
native escort was sent to put them aboard a German 
vessel. They were taken from this consular escort 
by force by French gendarmes. The German Con- 
sul's demand for their release was refused. Ger- 
many at first asked that an apology be made before 
the incident was referred to The Hague Tribunal. 
But international public opinion was hostile to the 
German side of the case, and at this moment Kaiser 
Wilhelm was betrayed into the indiscretion of the 
much-bruited Daily Telegraph interview. So the 
German Foreign Office did not feel strong enough 
to insist upon the apology. A Solomon's judgment 
was gravely rendered by the Tribunal. The Hague 
avoided carefully pronouncing on the real issue, 

382 



FRANCE GETS MOROCCO 

i. e., whether France was at home in Moroccan 
territory. The incident showed, however, that 
public opinion was beginning to be inflamed 
both in Germany and France over the Morocco 
question. 

In November, 1908, Abdul Aziz, who, after all 
the years of struggle, was not yet thirty, agreed to 
abdicate, if he were assured of his private property, 
a pension of thirty-five thousand dollars a year, and 
the right to live at Tangier. Hafid had now to gain 
recognition as Sultan from the Powers. At the 
end of the year, he received a communication from 
all the Powers through the French and Spanish 
Ministers stating that he must assume the debts 
of Abdul Aziz and agree to accept the provisions of 
the Act of Algeciras. Hafid proved himself a master 
at bargaining and dilatory tactics. He received a 
French Mission in January, 1909. While he was 
negotiating with the French he sent his Finance 
Minister to raise a loan in Europe, and strengthened 
his internal position by gaining a victory over Bu 
Hamara and by winning Raisuli through the gift 
of the governorship of the north. In April, a British 
Mission went to Fez, ostensibly to present some long 
outstanding British claims, but in reahty to impress 
on Hafid the necessity of agreeing to do what he 
was told by France. 

Hafid, however, continued to gain in strength by 
the disappearance of his rivals. The real Moham- 
med, Hafid's elder brother, conveniently died (per- 
haps he was poisoned) at Fez in June. Bu Hamara 
was captured in August, and taken to Fez in an 

383 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

iron cage.^ The more Hafid felt his strength, the 
more he wa^ disinclined to allow the French to 
dictate to him. 

Hafid succeeded in placating the French tempo- 
rarily and winning their support by agreeing to 
reimburse France for the expenses incurred in the 
Algerian frontier and Casablanca expeditions, and 
to satisfy the claims of European creditors, the 
majority of whom were French. A host of hungry 
crows flocked to Tangier, and presented their claims 
before a commission. It is best to draw the curtain 
on this shameful business, in which the European 
Legations were involved. Morocco was saddled 
early in 1910 with a debt of twenty million dollars. 
The Moors received nothing from the loan. The 
control of the customs and harbor dues, the munici- 
pal duties on real estate, and the tobacco monopoly 
passed into European hands. The revenues were 
to be used to pay the interest on the loan. There 
was no compensation for the natives, as elsewhere 
in Africa, by having the loan devoted — in part, at 
least — to railways and other public works. 

After the loan was arranged, Hafid again resisted 
the efforts of France to take over the administration 

^ He was kept in the cage for a long time, and then thrown to 
lions. Before they had mauled him to death, the executioner ar- 
rested him, and he was formally shot. The custom of keeping a 
prisoner of rank in a cage is very old in Oriental countries. Timur's 
treatment of Sultan Bayezid is one of the most famous examples. 
See my Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, pp. 255-256. Cage 
imprisonment is not unknown, however, in Occidental history. At 
Loches, near Tours, one can still see the place where Louis XI. kept 
Cardinal de la Balue suspended in an iron cage. 

384 



FRANCE GETS MOROCCO 

of Morocco. A campaign was then started in the 
French and British press. A year before, he had 
been extolled as a wonderful man, of strong character 
and promising future. Now he was charged with 
all sorts of unspeakable cruelties, of which the putting 
out of the way of Mohammed and Bu Hamara were 
only two counts on a long list. The Morocco Times 
correspondent, who was largely responsible for 
turning public opinion in England against Hafid, 
after having praised him at the time of his accession, 
told me that Hafid had really changed in nature 
during 1909 and 19 10. He could not stand power, 
and rapidly became worse than the brother whom 
he had succeeded. 

In the spring of 191 1, many tribes rebelled against 
Hafid. He was besieged in Fez. This was the 
moment for which France had been waiting. Act- 
ing on the obligation which her position as "pre- 
dominant power" imposed upon her, the French 
forces at Casablanca were reinforced, and two flying 
columns sent to relieve Fez. They were followed 
by a French army of eight thousand under General 
Moinier, which occupied Fez on May 21, 191 1. 
The independence of Morocco was over. 

As far as Europe was concerned, France would 
have had ati absolutely free hand, in spite of the 
Conference of Algeciras, had it not been for Spain 
and Germany. With these two Powers, France was 
compelled to negotiate. 

The interest of Spain in Morocco dated back to 
the end of the Middle Ages. It was natural that 
the Spaniards should feel, from the very fact of 
2S 385 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

geographical proximity, as much interest in Morocco 
as the Power that held Algeria. Spain claimed the 
coast line of the Mediterranean from Alcazar and 
Ceuta in the Strait of Gibraltar to the River Muluya, 
west of the Ujda region; and as far as El Arish on 
the Atlantic coast. Historically, said Spain, the 
whole of the Tetuan and Riff regions were hers. 
But possession is the only claim worth presenting in 
international diplomacy. Nous y sommes; nous y 
restons. While France was acting energetically 
on the Algerian frontier and on the Atlantic coast, 
Spain had been making great sacrifices to extend 
her authority in the hinterland of the Mediterra- 
nean region. Tangier was internationalized, because 
neither France nor Spain had been able before or 
after the Conference of Algeciras to get the other 
Powers to agree to giving up their rights there. 
While France was negotiating with Hafid in 1909, 
Spain had made a great military effort against 
the Riff tribes in the hinterland of Melilla. ^ When 

^ At first there were fifteen thousand Spanish troops at Melilla. 
A call for forty thousand reinforcements was made, which was later 
increased to seventy-five thousand. The tribesmen badly defeated 
the Spaniards on July 27th. It was necessary for Spain to make a 
regular hill campaign against the tribes to save her prestige, and to 
turn Melilla into a fortress. The Melilla campaign was the cause 
of serious internal troubles in Spain, especially at Barcelona, where 
there was an uprising at the end of July. I was in Barcelona during 
this uprising, and made a trip into the portions of Catalonia that 
were in the hands of the rebels. There was universal complaint 
against being sent to fight in Africa. Small wonder! In a few 
months, Spain had more men engaged and lost more killed and 
wounded than France during the whole period from the landing at 
Casablanca until all Morocco was, six years later, under French 
control. 

386 



FRANCE GETS' MOROCCO 

Morocco was saddled with her debt the following 
year, it was agreed that Spain should receive twelve 
million dollars for expenses of the Melilla campaign. 
In 191 1, when the grand coup was being carried on 
by France, Spain hurriedly sent troops to occupy 
various points in her zone, and almost came to blows 
with France. In fact, during the trying diplomatic 
period between the occupation of Fez and the settle- 
ment of the Franco- German controversy, France 
would have had serious trouble with Spain, if Spain 
had been a strong Power like Germany. But Spain 
was weak, and had to make the best terins with 
France that she could. 

Hafid did his very best to embroil France and 
Spain. Up to the moment of General Lyautey's 
arrival as Resident-General in Fez, he and his coun- 
sellors continued their intrigues. But Spain, 
although she invoked her rights under the Hispano- 
Moroccan Treaty of i860 to claim several ports on 
the Atlantic coast, finally signed a treaty with France 
at Madrid on November 2J, 1912, by which she 
was content to receive the northeastern corner of 
Morocco, with the exclusion of Tangier. Even this 
portion she has not been able to organize as military 
territory, much less administratively. The Moors 
have been won over to French rule, but they still 
refuse to acknowledge Spanish authority in the 
zone France agreed to leave to her by the Treaty 
of Madrid. The international status of Tangier 
has not yet been settled. It militates greatly against 
the interests of Tangier, of France, and of Morocco 
to have the hinterland between Tangier and Fez 

387 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

occupied by a Power that is unable to master the 
Tetuan and Riff tribes. It is probable that when 
the world's territories are readjusted at the end of 
the present war, Spain will find herself compelled 
to renounce the western portion, at least, of the 
territories she secured by the Treaty of Madrid. 
In the twentieth century, the state that cannot rule 
her colonies is bound to lose them. The law of the 
survival of the fittest works remorselessly. 

The story of how the Germans sent a gun-boat 
to Agadir, the port of the Sus region, and held up 
France for compensation, belongs, like the Confer- 
ence of Algeciras, to European history. We have 
not space here to go into the long and involved 
story of the controversy. On November 4, 191 1, 
Berlin and Paris came to an agreement. Two trea- 
ties were signed. The first, to be presented to the 
Powers who were parties to the Act of Algeciras, 
recorded Germany's consent to the establishment of 
the French Protectorate, under condition, that an 
equality of rights to all nations for trade, mining, and 
railway concessions, and coastal fishing, be guaran- 
teed by France. The second treaty gave Germany 
compensation by the cession of two large pieces of 
the French Congo to her Kamerun colony.^ 

As soon as France had arranged to buy off Ger- 
man opposition, she did not wait longer to come to 
a definite understanding with Spain, or to hear from 
the Powers who had signed the Act of Algeciras. 
In fact, she could not wait. It was a case of going 
into the land to possess it fully, or leaving in extreme 

' See above, pp. 306, 339. 

388 



FRANCE GETS MOROCCO 

peril her own forces and Europeans resident in 
Morocco. The situation required energy and mili- 
tary and diplomatic ability of a high order. On 
March 30, 1912, Sultan Hafid bowed to the inevi- 
table, and signed the treaty placing Morocco under 
French protection. Less than three weeks later, 
Moorish troops in Fez mutinied. They massacred 
seventeen French officers and nine French civilians. 
Europeans other than French were not molested. 
Four thousand troops were hurried to Fez by forced 
marches. On May 26, General Lyautey entered 
Fez to take supreme command of Morocco; There 
were nearly forty thousand French troops in the 
country. 

General Lyautey showed immediately a genius 
for doing the right thing that one is led by African 
colonial history to expect only of an Anglo-Saxon. 
General Moinier had fined Fez a milUon francs in 
punishment for the uprising. General Lyautey 
withdrew the edict. He put his finger immediately 
upon an injustice that was the principal cause of 
native hostility, just as it had been in Algeria, — 
the alienation of lands to French subjects and to 
natives who had been manifestly working for French 
political interests. He let it be known that France 
intended to do the square thing in every particular. 
There would be no injustice, no cruelty, no exploita- 
tion by the adventurers who followed the army. 

For five months, General Lyautey had his hands 
full in pacifying the country. He deposed Hafid, 
whom the French had never been able to trust, and 
put on the throne Yusef, the third son of Hassan 

389 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

to become Sultan. There was a pretender, who had 
captured Marakesh, to put down. In November, 
19 12, General Lyautey reported the pacification of 
Morocco, and asked for a loan of sixty million dol- 
lars to build railways and roads. During the first 
half of 1 9 13, General Lyautey discovered that there 
was still much important military work to be ac- 
complished. But just a year before the beginning 
of the European War, the French were able at last 
to devote all their energies to administrative or- 
ganization and to economic development. It is a 
splendid tribute to General Lyautey that he was 
able to send a large part of his army to France in 
August, 1914, including contingents recruited from 
tribes that had been his bitter enemies eighteen 
months before. 

Aside from two small military lines, there are as 
yet no railways in Morocco. The European War 
arrived too soon after the pacification to make 
possible a definite statement of how Morocco is 
thriving economically under French control. But 
the beginning is encouraging in every way, and is 
most flattering to the French authorities who have 
to cope with an international situation that presents 
many unsettled problems. 



390 



CHAPTER XX 

EGYPT UNDER THE LAST OF THE 
KHEDIVES 

THE most fascinating and best known portion of 
Africa, from the earliest days of history to 
the present time, is Egypt. The valley of 
the Nile plays no less important a part in world 
history to-day than twenty centuries ago or forty 
centuries ago or sixty centuries ago. More Ameri- 
cans go to Egypt than to other Mediterranean 
countries, with the exception of Italy. But no more 
in Egypt than in Italy are they interested in a con- 
temporary history. A guide (if I used the adjective 
insistent I would be guilty of redundancy!) came to 
me at Luxor last winter with an alluring project 
of a week's journey to ancient monuments. There 
were twelve items, I think. I crossed out all except 
the first, a moonlight donkey ride to Kamak. "I 
am here only for this evening," I explained. "To- 
morrow I must leave at six in the morning for Assiut. ' ' 
"But you have just arrived, " he remonstrated, "and 
no one goes to Assiut anyway." He did not under- 
stand when I told him that there was too much history 
being made in 1916 a.d. to waste time on 1916 B.C. 
"You cannot be an American," he said, shaking his 

391 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

head in disappointment and disapproval. Thou- 
sands of Americans who have visited Egypt since 
the beginning of the twentieth century know only 
one event of its modern history, the building of the 
Assuan Dam, and that because it was an "act of 
vandalism" that partly covered the Temple of 
Pylse. And yet, Egypt under the Pharaohs and 
Ptolemies is not as interesting as Egypt under the 
Khedives. The pyramids are not as monumental 
as the Suez Canal, and the ruins of Luxor as impres- 
sive as the realities of Assuan. Many and glorious 
are the pages in Britain's Empire overseas, but none 
so wonderful as the Egyptian page. In Egypt one 
realizes that the inheritance of the Roman Empire 
has not fallen on the Osmanlis through Constanti- 
nople, but on the English through York. 

Throughout the middle period of the nineteenth 
century, British foreign policy was built upon the 
maintenance of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman 
Empire lay between Europe and Asia. The Sultan 
of Tiu"key was the Khalif of the Mohammedan world. 
Russia was making great progress in Central Asia. 
This brought her to the northern and western con- 
fines of India, and extended her sovereignty over 
Mohammedan nations. If Russia became the mas- 
ter of Turkey, not only would she have access to 
the Mediterranean, but also she would control the 
destinies of Islam. The preservation of Britain's 
position in India and as predominant Power in the 
Mohammedan world depended upon checking Russia. 
British statesmen believed that the political in- 
dependence and the territorial integrity of the 

392 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

Ottoman Empire were essential to the British 
Empire overseas. The Crimean War was fought 
on this belief, and Russia was menaced with another 
war in 1877 in pursuance of the same policy. The 
Treaty of Berlin, which superseded the Treaty of 
San Stefano, was the work of British statesmen, 
who did not hesitate to sacrifice the Christian nations 
of the Balkans and the Christians under the Turkish 
yoke for the sake of British interests in India. This 
policy was abandoned because Egypt made no 
longer necessary its maintenance. 

When the Suez Canal was projected, and even 
while it was being built, the British opposed it. 
The French were doing it, and French influence in 
Egypt seemed as much a possible menace to India 
as Russian influence in Turkey. The year after the 
Canal was completed, Germany crushed France. 
From that moment, it was possible for Great Britain 
to get control of the Canal. To make secure the 
control of the Canal, Britain must have the predomi- 
nant position in Egypt. France would have to get 
out. I am stating the facts baldly. There was no 
deep-laid plot on the part of British statesmen to 
reap where they had not sown. Nations like in- 
dividuals are moved by irresistible forces. The 
Canal was cut. Steam-driven ships had displaced 
sail-driven ships. India and other important parts 
of Asia were already in British hands. In Australasia 
a new Anglo-Saxon world was in the process of 
development. Great Britain had to control" the 
path from east to west, which was far more important 
to her than to any other nation of Europe. 

393 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

The British entered Egypt in 1882 in a legitimate 
way. An anti-European movement threatened the 
lives and property of Europeans, and the safety of 
the Canal, which had become an essential inter- 
national waterway. The Khedive was powerless 
to restore order. Turkey, the suzerain state, could 
do nothing. France, invited to cooperate, refused 
to intervene. The British fleet and a small British 
army occupied Alexandria, Cairo, and the Canal, 
and restored the authority of the Khedive. An 
attempt was made immediately by British diplomacy 
to regularize the new situation. London announced 
that the army of occupation would be withdrawn 
when order was restored. 

No student, who has gone into the history of the 
decade that followed, can find reason to question 
the good faith and sincerity of the British Govern- 
ment. A mistake was made in not asking consent of 
the Powers and Turkey to the proclamation of a 
British Protectorate. But it was a mistake that 
demonstrates the honesty of purpose, if not the 
statesmanship, of those who directed the Foreign 
Office through a very trying period. It would have 
been a calamity for Egypt as well as for the world 
had the British withdrawn. The Egyptians could 
not work out their own salvation. Turkey was in- 
capable of taking back the country she had lost 
through her incapacity to govern. The Powers 
were unwilling to assume conjointly the responsibility 
of governing Egypt or of internationalizing the Canal. 
So the British authorities, supported by a garrison in 
Cairo, simply stayed on. There was nothing else to do. 

394 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

, At the beginning of the twentieth century, the 
British had been eighteen years in Egypt. From an 
international point of view, the situation was just 
as it was in the beginning — and it remained so until 
Turkey's entrance into the present war led to the 
establishment of a British Protectorate. 

Nominally, Egypt was an autonomous vilayet 
(province) of the Ottoman Empire ruled by a khe- 
dive (viceroy). The relations between Turkey and 
Egypt had been arranged by agreements between 
sultans and khedives. The khedives acknowledged 
the suzerainty of the sultans, and paid an annual 
tribute. After Ismail, succession in the khedivate 
was from father to son and not (as should be the 
practice in an Islamic country) to the oldest living 
member of the house of Mohammed AH. The 
Turkish flag was used in Egypt, and the spiritual 
overlordship of Constantinople acknowledged by 
Cairo. The relations between Egypt and other 
nations had been established by treaties with Turkey. 
Europeans and Americans enjoyed the privileges of 
a capitulatory regime as in Turkey. Their interests 
were looked after by consuls-general in Cairo, 
exercising diplomatic functions, and consuls and 
consular agents in other cities. Justice was ad- 
ministered in consular courts and in mixed tribunals 
of European and Egyptian judges. The Egyptian 
debt was under international control, with repre- 
sentatives of the Powers supervising the expenditure 
of revenues affected to pay the interest on the debt. 
All nations had the same privileges in regard to 
customs and doing business in the country. The 

395 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Government of the Khedive was exercised by a 
ministry, with a premier, as in European states, but, 
as in Oriental states, the Khedive kept legislative 
authority in his own hands. His national council 
and national assembly were advisory bodies, possess- 
ing only such authority as the Khedive was willing 
for them to enjoy. 

Practically, Egypt was quit of Turkish control 
with the tribute and the flag. The ruler of the 
country was the British Consul-General, who ruled 
through advisers in the different ministries. For 
the sake of form, the diplomatic agents of other 
countries looked upon the Khedive as ruler of Egypt, 
and carried on negotiations with the Khedive's 
ministry. In fact, all matters were decided at the 
British Agency. The Khedive was a figurehead: 
and his ministers were figureheads. Britain ruled 
with the hand of a master. The final authority was 
the British Cabinet, to whom the Consul-General 
made an annual report. 

Great Britain's position in Egypt was maintained 
by a garrison in the Cairo citadel, and by control of 
the Egyptian army through British officers, who 
held the principal commands. 

This situation was possible only through the im- 
potence of Turkey, the acquiescence of the Powers, 
and the willingness of the Egyptians to live under 
British authority. In order to stay in Egypt, it 
was necessary for the British officials to keep Turkey 
and the Powers from interfering, and to prevent a 
movement in Egypt on the part of the Khedive and 
the educated Egyptians to take back into their own 

396 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

hands the control of the country. From the very 
beginning, it was reaHzed that this could not be 
accomplished through force — save as regarded Tur- 
key. The Powers would accept the de facto regime in 
Egypt only if the British succeeded in making the 
country prosper, so that the interest on the debt 
could be paid, and in affording security and equal 
opportunity to all Europeans to reside and to do 
business in the country. As far as the Egyptians 
were concerned, the task of Great Britain was to give 
them good government and prosperity. 

The British were able to stay in Egypt during the 
last two decades of the nineteenth century, and to 
make the Egyptians and the world in general accept 
the status quo, all the while strengthening their 
position, not because of the garrison in the Cairo 
citadel, but because of the ability to send to Egypt, 
for the civil administration and for the army, men 
whose genius was matched only by their devotion. 
British officers built up anew the Egyptian army. 
British engineers solved the problem of irriga- 
tion. British administrators attacked successfully 
the political, social, and economic problems of bring- 
ing peace and prosperity and contentment out of an- 
archy and poverty and oppression. The supervising 
agency of this remarkable achievement was the 
British Consul-General, Sir Evelyn Baring, after- 
wards Lord Cromer. 

There is no need here to go into the economic 
history of Egypt under British control. Twenty 
years after the British entered Egypt, Lord Cromer 
was able to write that the institution of slavery 

397 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

was virtually defunct; the corvee (forced labor) 
practically abolished; the courbash (whip) no longer 
employed as an instrument of government ; the army 
efficient and well-organized, and the abuses under 
the old recruiting system swept away; new prisons 
and reformatories built and the treatment of pris- 
oners in conformity with principles generally adopted 
in Europe ; the sick nursed in well-equipped and well- 
managed hospitals; lunatics no longer treated like 
wild beasts; means provided for allowing peasants 
to free themselves from the grip of money-lenders; 
a very great impulse given to education in all its 
branches; the Assuan Dam opened, which would 
provide one-third of the agricultural area of Upper 
Egypt with perennial irrigation; modern railways 
running from one end of the country to the other; 
more than one hundred million dollars spent on 
railways and other public works, all saved out of 
the resources of Egypt, without recourse to foreign 
capital or increase of the public debt; cotton-raising 
developed so as to make Egypt one of the first pro- 
ducers of the world; Alexandria and Cairo trans- 
formed into great European cities; Alexandria and 
Port Said developed into ports and coaling stations 
of mondial importance; and the Suez Canal made 
secure as the waterway of four continents. The 
Egyptian Treasury contained an accumulated sur- 
plus of thirty million dollars, which was increasing 
annually by nearly three million dollars. When 
one contrasts the economic and financial history of 
the mother country, Turkey, during the same period, 
and social conditions in Egypt and other Islamic 

398 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

countries, the benefit of British rule cannot be 
contested. 

But the whole story of Egypt in the twentieth 
century impresses us with the truth of the fact that 
man liveth not by bread alone. No nation is con- 
tented with material blessings. Nations, like in- 
dividuals, are in an unhealthy state when they have 
not developed by their own efforts, and are pro- 
foundly unhappy when they are not managing their 
own affairs. It is vain to try to persuade them that 
they are better off under guardianship of another 
nation stronger and more intelligent and more capable 
than themselves. There is no more profound truth 
in the history of human relationships than that 
the benefactor is as much hated as the taskmaster. 
Only when gifts are solicited and appreciated — and 
not always then — is the giver liked. It is rare that 
charity helps any one. Assistance ought to be on 
the quid pro quo basis. Above all things in the world 
it is impossible to help a man upwards morally when 
you consider yourself his superior, and he knows that 
you consider yourself his superior. I suppose this 
will be considered rank heresy by many of my readers. 
But it explains the history of Egypt in the last 
fifteen years. Instead of marveling at the ingrati- 
tude and blindness and shortsightedness of the 
Egyptians, and denouncing the folly of their aspira- 
tions, it is best to realize that their sentiments are 
probably just what ours would be if we were in their 
place. 

Abbas Hilmi came to the throne, upon the death 
of his father, Tewfik, in 1892, when he was a boy of 

399 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

eighteen. From the very beginning of his reign, 
it was impressed upon him by Lord Cromer, Colonel 
Kitchener, and other British officials with whom he 
came in contact, that he must realize which side his 
bread was buttered on. He was given all the show 
of power with none of the reality, and whenever he 
seemed disposed to have an opinion contrary to that 
of London or the British Agency, Lord Cromer 
talked to him Hke a Dutch Uncle. He made the 
best of it: because he had to. But one can hardly 
blame him for not appreciating his benefits as much 
as his benefactors did, especially as it was constantly 
in his mind that, although they were doing the 
handsome thing by Egypt, they were inspired, not 
by love for Egypt, but by the fact that Great Britain 
must stay in Egypt in order to keep control of the 
Suez Canal. The thought must often have occurred 
to him that the British had no real right, except that 
of superior force, to rule the country which his ances- 
tors had wrested from the Turks and into which the 
khedives had tried to introduce modern civilization 
long before Lord Cromer came. I take Abbas 
Hilmi here as the illustration of the general attitude 
of well-bom and educated Egyptians, whether they 
are of Arabic, Turkish, Coptic, Syrian, or Armenian 
origin. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, in 
Moslem lands education in missionary colleges and 
in European and American universities, and general 
contact with Occidental civilization, inspired the 
younger generation with the desire to establish a 
democratic and representative form of government. 

400 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE^ 

The movement was, of course, primarily directed 
against the despotism of Oriental systems of govern- 
ment. Had it not been for the fact that in some 
Moslem countries, such as Egypt and India, Euro- 
peans were already in control, and in others, such as 
Persia and Turkey, were endeavoring to gain control, 
this movement would have been purely political, 
and would not have affected international European 
politics. Partly for this reason and partly for the 
reason that the smartest and most advanced and 
best educated elements within the Moslem countries 
were the Christian minority, the Young Turk, Young 
Persian, Young Indian, and Young Egyptian move- 
ments very quickly took on an unfortunate religious 
character. So the democratic ideal became hope- 
lessly diverted. It was the mixing of oil and water. 
Islam is an admirable social democracy within the 
Moslem world. But it does not grant equality 
before the law to non-Moslems, and it is irrecon- 
ciliable in theory and practice with the modern state, 
endowed with representative institutions, that has 
been evolved by Christian civilization. The Young 
Moslems wanted Christian Occidental institutions, 
without their foundation and without their spirit. 
The result was anti-European and anti-Christian 
propaganda that would have brought either anarchy 
or oligarchy, had the Young Moslems succeeded 
in carrying out their program. Their partial suc- 
cess in Persia and in Turkey did, in fact, bring 
anarchy in Persia and oligarchy in Turkey. Egypt 
and India were saved by the strong hand of their 
British master. 

26 401 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Coupled with the Young Moslem movement was 
the pan-Islamic movement, launched by the Old 
Moslems. It, also, was anti-European and anti- 
Christian. It has failed just as the Young Moslem 
movement has failed, because the spirit of sohdarity 
is lacking in Islam, and because the great mass of 
the followers of Mohammed are so ignorant that they 
cannot grasp the possibilities and the advantages of 
political union. Moslem countries will have neither 
national nor international awakening until they have 
passed through the stage of popular education and 
until they have produced their Montesquieus, their 
Lockes, their Adam Smiths, their Diderots, their 
Voltaires, their Rousseaus, their John Stuart Mills, 
and their Herbert Spencers. Their great Revolution 
will come only after they are capable of a Tugendbund. 

Egypt, the connecting link between Moslem Asia 
and Moslem Africa, the home of enlightened Young 
Moslems and of the most fanatical element of Islam, 
refuge and pasture-ground of the most Tory of 
Turkish pashas, vital milestone on Britain's path to 
India, neighbor of Arabia and the Holy Cities, was 
the maelstrom of Islamic agitation during the first 
decade of the twentieth century. What the British 
had to face in Egypt and how they faced it is an 
all-important page in contemporary history. Three 
Consuls-General, Lord Cromer, Sir Eldon Gorst, and 
Lord Kitchener played a larger part in the history 
of the world than they were aware of when they were 
dealing with the Egyptian Nationalist movement. 

Mustafa Kamel built his Nationalist propaganda 
upon the hope of French intervention in Egypt. 

402 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

He imbibed his democratic notions and conceived 
the idea of a free Egypt in Paris. He was "taken 
up" in certain circles and frequented certain salons 
where the principal topic of conversation was how 
the French hated the English. This was the year of 
Fashoda. When I first knew of Mustafa Kamel, 
he was being flattered and filled full of ideas by 
several influential Frenchmen and one celebrated 
Frenchwoman (it is not necessary to mention their 
names now, for they have since become as intensely 
Anglophile as they were then Anglophobe). Mus- 
tafa Kamel was very limited intellectually. But his 
French friends saw in him the best sort of a fire- 
brand to throw into Egypt in revenge for the attitude 
of Lord Cromer and Lord Kitchener at Fashoda. 
For Mustafa Kamel had enthusiasm and magnetism 
and the gift of public speaking — just the qualities of 
the demagogue. He could be inspired and con- 
trolled by French journalists working discreetly 
behind the scenes. 

At the end of 1899, Mustafa Kamel returned to 
Cairo from Paris, and gathered around him by his 
brilliant, though superficial eloquence, the educated 
young men of Egypt. He would not have had the 
ghost of a chance to succeed among intellectual and 
thoughtful people, had it not been that they were 
continually smarting from the fact that the British 
in Egypt, residents as well as officials, treated them 
as social inferiors. In order to extend his propa- 
ganda to the fellahin, he founded the Arabic news- 
paper Lewa. Its success was phenomenal. Within 
a year, Lewa became the most influential newspaper 

403 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

in Egypt. The fellahin could not read, but the 
local Moslem clergy gathered the villagers around 
them, and read to them of the new glory that would 
come to Islam when the English were expelled. 

At the very beginning, the Nationalist movement 
dug its own grave. Mustafa Kamel and his associ- 
ates thought that giving their propaganda a religious 
character was the essential factor of success; but in 
doing this, they defeated the very end they thought 
they were advancing. Although Mustafa Kamel 
considered himself almost a Frenchman and looked 
to France for support, he was too stupid to see that 
his agitation was directed against the interests of those 
on whose cooperation he was banking. The Egyp- 
tian Nationalist movement was launched by French- 
men to make trouble for the British. It paved the 
way for the Anglo-French entente! Mustafa Kamel's 
speeches and writings in Egypt, and the Young 
Egyptian congresses in vSwitzerland, caused alarm 
among far-seeing French statesmen, who saw in 
pan-Islamism a menace to their own interests fully 
equal to the menace to British interests. From 
the moment of its birth, the Egyptian Nationalist 
movement was a boomerang to the French. The 
most bitter Anglophobes began to feel the necessity 
of an understanding with Great Britain. There was 
the same reaction in Russia. 

Nothing in contemporary history is more fascinat- 
ing than the study of the change in Anglo-French 
relations between 1898 and 1904. The student is 
convinced of four things: that common interests 
rather than common ideals bring nations together 

404 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

into political alliances; that these common interests 
are decided by a few men, who are able, even in 
democracies, to lead their nations along paths that 
the people at large are wholly ignorant they are 
following; that the success of these few men in 
winning and keeping the power to decide the des- 
tinies of their fellow-countrymen is assured by the 
cooperation of press agencies and newspapers; and 
that the appeal to national honor and patriotism is 
in reality an appeal to the two basic passions of 
mankind, pride and pocket-book. When the storm 
breaks, and the nation finds itself in danger, there can 
be no doubt that the men who go to war are imbued 
.with the highest and noblest qualities, and give their 
lives gladly in defense of their homes and their loved 
ones. God forbid that the slightest aspersion be 
cast upon the motives leading heroic soldiers to suffer 
and endure and die for their country. But in follow- 
ing the gathering of the storm clouds, before they 
breaks one sees clearly the iniquity of secret diplo- 
macy. We are in hell now% and have to get out of it 
the best way we can. But if students and writers 
are honestly and courageously devoted to their high 
calling, they will do all in their power to enlighten 
pubUc opinion, in the hope that the next generation, 
by taking into its own hands the decision of national 
policies and national destinies, will avoid another 
descent into hell. 

The Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 was a death- 
blow to the Egyptian Nationalist movement and to 
the success of pan-Islamism, which depended upon 
the rivalry of the two European Powers who had most 

405 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

to do with Islam. It came just in time. France 
needed a free hand in Morocco and West Africa 
and the Sudan. Great Britain needed to be re- 
lieved of French opposition in Egypt. Not only 
were the Nationalists gaining in strength, but 
Turkey was beginning to interfere with the British 
occupation. 

The extension of the Ottoman railway from Damas- 
cus to Medina and Mecca brought Great Britain and 
Turkey into conflict over the question of the control 
of the Sinai Peninsula. To anticipate the Turks, 
Lord Cromer sent Egyptian troops to occupy posts 
on the west side of the Gulf of Akaba. They found 
the Turkish flag flying there. The Turks demanded 
a boundary line which would have brought them to 
the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. The British 
Ambassador at Constantinople was instructed to 
demand the withdrawal of Turkish garrisons from the 
peninsula, and to insist upon the right of Egypt, 
under the Sultan's firman of 1892, to administer 
the peninsula. The British claim really rested on a 
telegram of Lord Cromer, appended at the time to 
the firman, to which the Ottoman Government had 
then "raised no objection." Turkey had to give in, 
and the safety of the Canal was assured. It was at 
this same time that the Turks were active in the 
hinterland of Tripoli, and France was having a 
similar discussion with the Sublime Porte over the 
Turkish garrisons the French had found in the 
Sahara on the route to Lake Chad. The benefit of 
the Agreement of 1904 began to be evident to many 
Frenchmen who had not up to this time become 

406 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

reconciled to it. This was the period, also, of the 
Conference of Algeciras. 

The discussion with Turkey brought about much 
unrest in Egypt, where the Nationalists were in open 
sympathy with Turkey's side of the case. A British 
soldier was beaten in the streets of Cairo, and on 
June 13, 1906, the villagers of Denshawai assaulted 
five British officers who were shooting pigeons. 
One of them was killed, and two others seriously 
injured. The natives were arrested and tried by a 
special tribunal. Four were hanged, two sent to 
prison for life, ten for shorter terms, and' eight were 
flogged. As there was no doubt that the villagers 
acted under great provocation, and had not at- 
tacked the officers with intention to kill, the severity 
of the sentence caused a great outcry in England, 
and had a very bad effect in Egypt. ^ It gave to 
the Nationalist party support among the Jellahin 
that had been lacking before. 

In the midst of the Nationalist turmoil. Lord 

^ I first visited Egypt three years later, when the Nationahsts were 
in close connection with the Young Turks. I found the Denshawai 
executions invariably called "the massacre " by the Young Egyptians. 
After a lapse of six more years, during my visit of 1916, "the mas- 
sacre" was still vivid in the minds of many to whom I talked. They 
spoke of it as the unforgettable and unforgivable crime that had 
revealed to them the bitterness and injustice of their slavery. More 
than one Egyptian drew the parallel between the British military 
caste and the Prussian military caste, and said that the ofl5cers who 
were shooting pigeons against the protest of the villagers richly 
deserved the beating they got. There was no evidence whatever that 
the villagers intended to kill them. The provocation must have been 
very great: for the fellahin are peacefully inclined, and have very 
little courage. 

407 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Cromer resigned after twenty-five years of service. 
We have already spoken of the wonderful work he 
accomplished in the economic and social regeneration 
of Egypt. I have not thought it necessary to go into 
this side of Egyptian contemporary history. The 
literature on the subject is voluminous, and accessible 
to English-speaking readers everywhere. Lord Cro- 
mer himself has written in detail the history of his 
quarter century in Egypt. ^ From a material point 
of view, it is the record of a miraculous achievement. 
But the Egyptians never forgot that Lord Cromer 
was a British official, ruling them against their will, 
and always putting British interests before Egyptian 
interests. A most intelligent Egyptian, who is a 
believer in a limited British control of Egypt, an 
admirer of British methods and British results, 
and an influential supporter of the present British 
Protectorate, said to me recently : ' ' During the first 
fifteen years of the British occupation. Lord Cromer 
was the right man in the right place. We needed 
just his type. But he fell short of greatness, and 
did not build a lasting monument, because he failed 

' The two volumes, Modern Egypt, are well worth the attention of 
the general reader. The third volume, Abbas Hilmi, written since 
the war started, is totally unworthy of its author, and is a sad testi- 
mony to the fact that the sanest and fairest of men were swept away 
by passion and prejudice after the outbreak of the present war. If 
there is anything that is repugnant to the Anglo-Saxon nature it is 
kicking a man when he is down. Undoubtedly, Lord Cromer regrets 
very deeply this little volume, which represents neither his spirit 
nor that of his fellow-countrymen. We must throw out A bbas Hilmi, 
and judge Lord Cromer by Modern Egypt. We can give no higher 
praise to the book than to say that it is worthy of the subject and the 
writer. 

408 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

to realize that the people to whom he had given the 
material benefits of European civilization, from the 
very reason that he had given them those benefits, 
had come to the place where they refused longer to 
be treated as children, and wanted other things that 
are the right and privilege of European civilization. 
Egypt was his child. But if he had had a son, and 
treated him straight through twenty-five years as he 
treated Egypt and Egypt's Khedive, he would have 
had exactly the same result. He left us unloved." 
This was certainly the verdict of Egypt at the 
time. A farewell demonstration was organized at 
the Cairo Opera House. Except the officials, who had 
to go for fear of losing their places, no prominent 
Egyptians were present. The only member of the 
khedivial family in attendance was Prince Said 
Halim (now Grand Vizier of Turkey), who was 
on the outs with the Khedive and went to spite him. 
When Lord Cromer departed from Cairo, elaborate 
military and police measures were taken to protect 
him from insult and bodily injury. 

The program Lord Cromer left for Egypt was: 
abolition of the capitulations, so the Government 
would have control over the foreigners in the coun- 
try ; participation of all residents in a legislative body ; 
an ideal of Egyptian nationality, which took in all 
the inhabitants, irrespective of race, religion, or 
extraction. 

The new Consul-General, Sir Eldon Gorst, was a 
man of pronounced democratic tendencies and liberal 
sympathies. He started in by determining not to 
"put on airs," and his Jeffersonian simplicity led 

409 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

him to appear in the streets of Cairo hatless, astride 
a donkey. This, of course, was the ridiculous other 
extreme of pomposity. Aloofness in a high official 
is no greater weakness than "hail fellow well met." 
In a speech to his staff, Sir Eldon declared that the 
aim of the British occupation was not to rule the 
Egyptians, but to teach them to rule themselves. 
This was immediately taken up by the Nationalists, 
who asked the embarrassing question: How can a 
nation he taught to rule themselves so long as they are 
not granted the slightest bit of real responsibility and 
real authority? 

Mustafa Kamel died in February, 1908. He did 
not live to see the success of his party in the elections 
for the Legislative Council, and the dissension 
immediately following, which resulted in a party 
split. The Nationalist program was : administrative 
independence of Egypt under khedivial authority; 
fulfillment of British pledges to terminate occupation ; 
representative institutions with full political and 
administrative powers ; free primary education in the 
Arabic language; preferential employment of Egyp- 
tians in government services; extension of jurisdic- 
tion of mixed courts to criminal cases in which 
foreigners are concerned. In December, the Council 
passed a unanimous motion, calling upon the Govern- 
ment to initiate legislation to give the country full 
participation in internal administration. The Coun- 
cil called attention to the fact that only twenty- 
four per cent, of the boys of school age were given 
an opportunity to go to school. 

The Young Turk Revolution, which gave Turkey a 
410 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

Constitution and a Parliament, had a tremendous 
repercussion in Egypt. The Nationalist newspapers 
reprinted the glowing articles of the English press 
in commendation of representative government in 
Turkey, and asked how the English could sincerely 
sustain the Young Turks while they suppressed the 
Young Egyptians. Lewa began to publish violent 
and inflammatory articles. When the Khedive 
and his Cabinet did not come out boldly for the 
Nationalist cause, they too received as severe press 
criticism as the British "intruders," The answer 
was that which has invariably met the first efforts 
of people for self-government in every country: a 
press law, with a system of fines, suspensions, and 
suppressions, was introduced. But it was wholly 
contrary to the Liberal spirit of Anglo-Saxondom, 
and gained for the Nationalists sympathy and active 
support in England, which might have helped greatly 
their cause, had they not resorted to violence and 
crime. On September 14, 1909, the twenty-seventh 
anniversary of the British occupation, the following 
telegram was sent from Cairo to the British Prime 
Minister and the Turkish Grand Vizier: 

"A meeting of six thousand Egyptians assembled 
here to-day desires to convey to Your Excellency 
the unanimous and energetic protest of the Egyptian 
people against the British occupation, and demands 
from to-day the evacuation, relying upon the engage- 
ments and solemn oaths of the Queen's Governments. 
Moreover, to gain our friendship is preferable for 
English honor than to lose our hearts and sup- 
port." 

411 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

On February 20, 1910, the Egyptian Premier, 
Boutros Pasha, was assassinated by a Moslem 
Nationalist, who had been correspondent for Lewa 
at the Young Egyptian Congress in Geneva the year 
before. No connection was proved between the 
assassination and the Nationalist party. But the 
Nationalists — or rather the radical element of them 
— did not condemn the crime. In fact, they con- 
sidered the assassin a hero: and he has become their 
martj^r. This crime was the culmination of the 
breach that had long been growing among the 
Nationalists. Boutros Pasha was a Copt. The 
Copts could no longer sustain a national movement 
that had become anti-Christian. The moderate 
section of the Moslems among the Nationalists were 
certain that the party policy of violence was ruinous. 
They seceded.^ In the summer of 1910, there were 

^ The split really occurred in 1908, but there were hopes for two 
years of a reconciliation. The temperament of the Egyptians makes 
them opposed to violence. One might say that the middle-aged and 
elder Egyptians had never looked upon the program of the National- 
ists with a feeling other than that of misgiving and alarm. The 
"Party of the People" was formed, which claimed to be in entire 
sympathy with the Nationalists' demands upon Britain, but believed 
in confining the propaganda to a rational and courteous discussion 
of the problem of emancipation, and in refraining from an agitation 
that would awaken religious fanaticism and hatred of foreigners. 
This Party founded its own newspaper, Garidah. The Nationalists 
claimed that the new Party represented notables and rich pro- 
prietors. But there was a question of division far more serious than 
that of Liberal and Conservative temperament. The Nationalists 
advocated close union with Turkey, while the Party of the People 
believed that the only hope of Egypt was in keeping absolutely free. 
Later, a third party, the partisans of the Khedive, through the news- 
paper Moyaed, pronounced for a propaganda to convince the British 

412 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

two Young Egyptian congresses in Europe, one 
branch sitting at Geneva and the other at Brussels. 
Both called on England once more to fulfil her 
pledges to evacuate Egypt. 

A popular movement can be successful only if it 
fulfils three conditions: remaining united; enlisting 
a number of men who have political prestige and 
wealth; and winning the officers of the army. The 
Nationalist Party, although all Egyptians were in 
sympathy with its general aims, failed in all three 
of the essentials of success. At the beginning, the 
movement would have amounted to nothing,- had it 
not been backed by French influence. After the 
French abardoned them, the Nationalists would not 
have been a serious menace, had they not been 
able still to enlist influences outside of Egypt: pan- 
Islamism and the Young Turks in the suzerain 
Ottoman Empire, and radical sentiment in England. 
The Turkish aid disappeared with the Italian and 
Balkan wars, and EngUsh help was largely lost by 
the assassination of Boutros Pasha. 

Former President Roosevelt, on his way home from 
a hunting trip in Central Africa, arrived in Cairo 
shortly after the assassination of Boutros Pasha. 
According to his usual custom of getting down off 
the fence and taking the bull by the horns, Mr. 
Roosevelt told the students of Cairo University that 

that it was to their best interests to fulfil the solemn promise made to 
evacuate Egypt. The Khedivial party, having no illusions concern- 
ing the ability of the Egyptians to start a revolution without or with 
the aid of Turkey, knew that evacuation or the granting of self- 
government would come only from the free act of the British. 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

he did not consider Egypt ready for self-government, * 
and later in London he told the British that they 
ought either to rule Egypt or to get out. While 
the first statement shocked Liberals on both sides 
of the Atlantic, and the second was a rude jolt to the 
complacency of insular Britons, none who was 
acquainted with the situation contested the truth 
of either observation. When press and Parliament 
were full of Mr. Roosevelt's "impetuosity," Sir 
Edward Grey, commenting on the Roosevelt speech 
at the Guildhall, stated for the first time openly and 
without equivocation that Great Britain intended 
to rule and was not going to get out. This was an 
answer, not only to Mr. Roosevelt's critics, but also 
to the Egyptians, who had just been celebrating 
with enthusiasm the rejection by the Egyptian 
General Assembly of the proposition to extend for 
forty years beyond 1968 the concession of the 
Suez Canal Company. Sir Edward Grey para- 
phrased the saying of President Cleveland, by 
declaring that in Egypt "we have to consider 
facts rather than theories." His attitude was very 
different from the vacillation of earHer Liberal 
Foreign Secretaries. 

The Copts are the descendants of the Egyptians 
who were not assimilated by the Arabs at the 
time of the Mohammedan conquest. They took 

' The New York Nation of April 7, 19 10, commenting unfavorably 
upon this speech, declared: "Egyptians . . . have the recent ex- 
perience of Turkey to hearten them." The most serious American 
journals, even after nearly two years, were still in complete ignorance 
of what was happening in Turkey. 

414 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

the language and many of the customs of the con- 
querors, but preserved their religion. As in Tur- 
key, this surviving Christian element of the 
earlier civilization, by the fact that it remained 
politically inferior and socially distinct from the 
ruling race, developed remarkable commercial abili- 
ties. As the Moslems were prevented by their reli- 
gion from exercising the profession of money-lending, 
the Copts became the bankers. All through the 
Near East the Christians — Greeks, Armenians, 
Syrians, and Copts — are what the Jews are in 
Christian countries, and for similar reasons. When 
European civilization and European finance and 
European economic and political conditions were 
introduced into Moslem lands, the Christian elements 
were already prepared to take advantage of ithe 
revolution effected by contact with the Occident. 
The missionaries who came, finding the door shut to 
their proselytizing efforts among the Moslems, 
started into catholicize and protestantize the Eastern 
Christians. Not many were weaned away from their 
own Church. But almost all came under the edu- 
cational influence of the missionaries. They learned 
our ways and our languages. This, also, was a 
tremendous advantage in enabling them to profit by 
the new conditions. So it was not unnatural that 
the Moslem ruling races became jealous of their 
Christian subject races, and suspected them of being 
a reason for and party to European intervention, 
and the humiliating political infeodation of Moham- 
medan Africa and Asia to Christian Europe. The 
Christians of the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor 

415 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

have unquestionably been victims of European 
colonial ambitions and rivalries. 

The Copts, like the Armenians in Turkey, looked 
upon the constitutional movement in Islam as a 
means of deliverance from the bond of servitude 
and the ever present shadow of massacre. They 
were not only willing, but eager, to cooperate in the 
Nationalist movement, until they realized that the 
Young Moslems connotated nationality as religious 
and racial, and not geographical. The assassination 
of Boutros Pasha was an unwelcome, though not 
unexpected, awakening. Shortly after the crime. 
Sir Edward Grey, in answer to an interpellation in 
Parliament, declared that "it is false that England 
in Egypt is sowing dissension between the Copts and 
the Moslems." This is undoubtedly true. The sus- 
picion arose, probably, from the fact that the British 
administration in Egypt, under Sir Eldon Gorst, 
began to do all in its power to alienate promising 
Nationalists from the cause by the bribe of giving 
them Government positions; and that this policy 
aroused the resentment of the Copts against the 
Moslems and made easier the stifling of liberal 
aspirations and Anglophobia in the younger gen- 
eration. 

Against the advice of the head of their Church 
and of some of their leading men, the Copts held a 
Congress in March, 1911, in Assiut, which was at- 
tended by five hundred delegates. The ostensible 
object was to "remove the causes of difference 
between the various communities, constituting the 
Egyptian nation." Sir Eldon Gorst rejected all 

416 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

their demands. Their chief complaint was that they 
were discriminated against in the filling of public 
offices. One finds it very difficult to sympathize 
with the Coptic position, on grounds of their best 
national interests as well as of elementary justice. 
The Copts had more than half the posts in the 
Egyptian civil service, although they comprised 
less than ten per cent, of the population! They 
argued, and still argue, that this is because they 
have ten times as many educated young men as the 
Moslems. 

The fatal weakness of education upon ■ Orientals, 
Moslems as well as Christians, is the demoralization 
that seems to follow it. When an Oriental has his 
diploma, he feels that he is a gentleman, and that he 
must follow a profession in a big city, or get a Govern- 
ment position. He does not want to return to his 
village. Farming, where he has to do any of the 
work with his own hands, is unthinkable. Com- 
merce is unattractive. Business is for men without 
an education. For those who have not the money 
or persistence or brains to qualify for a profession, 
Government service is the summum honum, no, the 
solum honum. Cairo and Alexandria are full of 
young men, whose education has spoiled them for 
any other pursuit than that of sitting around cafes. 
Not until we can instil into the Oriental mind that 
agriculture and commerce are dignified callings, 
demanding the best brains of the nation, will educa- 
tion prepare Oriental nations for self-government. 
The East needs primary education and industrial 
schools, where enthusiastic and devoted teachers 
27 417 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

glorify by example as well as by precept the dignity 
of labor, before it needs more colleges and universi- 
ties. The young Oriental, who possesses financial 
resources, is able to go to Europe or America for his 
higher education. The village boys had better be 
taught farming and stock-raising and trades and 
business. 

Sir Eldon Gorst died in July, 191 1. Long before 
the end came, he was a very sick man, and, perhaps 
largely for that reason, seemed discouraged and pessi- 
mistic. His last public utterance on Egyptian affairs 
was: "The policy of ruling the country in co- 
operation with native ministers is, at the present 
time, incompatible with that of encouraging the 
development of so-called representative institu- 
tions. . . . The recent experiment has, so far as the 
Legislative Council and General Assembly are con- 
cerned, proved a failure, and the results derived 
from them have not been in accordance with our 
intentions or hopes." 

Italy's declaration of war against Turkey, for the 
purpose of taking away the last province of the Otto- 
man Empire in Africa, marked the beginning of a 
crisis in the relations of Europe to the Near East 
that has not yet ended. The British Cabinet knew 
that a strong man, who was intimately acquainted 
with the Egyptian situation, must be appointed 
to Sir Eldon Gorst 's place. There was only one man 
who filled the bill. From the first days of the 
British occupation to the Boer War, Kitchener had 
made his career in Egypt. He returned in November, 
191 1, to grapple with a situation that needed "the 

418 



EGYPT UNDER THE LAST KHEDIVE 

big stick" as well as intimate personal experience 
of Islam, Egypt, Turkey, and North African military 
conditions. The situation was one of great delicacy. 
Turkey had a right to call upon Egypt for aid, or at 
least to allow the passage of troops and military 
supplies. But Great Britain, through diplomatic 
agreements, was bound to preserve the neutrality of 
Egypt. Even those Egyptians who were hostile to 
a rapprochement between Egypt and Turkey, sympa- 
thized with Turkey on sentimental as well as religious 
grounds. Italy seemed to be attacking Islam. The 
way the war was started, and the inability of the 
Italians to solve the military situation they had 
created for themselves in Tripoli, disgusted every- 
body in Egypt, Europeans as well as natives. I 
have never met a British official who sympathized 
with Italian ambitions or Italian methods. 

Lord Kitchener succeeded remarkably in suppress- 
ing agitation and in strengthening Britain's hold on 
Egypt. In view of the test that was going to come 
in 1 9 14, Kitchener's three years in Egypt, following 
the Gorst regime, were extremely fortunate for the 
British Empire. A mad conspiracy to assassinate 
the IQiedive, the Prime Minister, the British Consul- 
General, and two judges was discovered in 1912 in the 
inner circle of the Nationalist Party. It gave Lord 
Kitchener the opportunity to suppress Lewa, and to 
put the moving spirit of the Nationalists into jail 
for fifteen years. Lord Kitchener built extensive 
barracks at Cairo. He devoted his energies to 
organizing an efficient secret service throughout 
Egypt, and to getting a complete hold on the native 

419 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

officers of the army. He made an excellent move 
to win the Moslem clergy by creating a Ministry of 
Wakfs (religious foundations). Trying to control 
the expenditure of the revenues from religious 
foundations along European lines had proved as 
impolitic as it was hopeless. If the Moslem clergy- 
had some leeway in the spending and accounting 
for the Wakf revenues, they would be more satisfied 
to accept a tolerant British control. If occasionally 
a village Imam wanted to buy a goat with the money 
instead of repairing the mosque, why interfere and 
gain his ill-will? 

Lord Kitchener's report for 19 13 was able to show 
splendid economic progress, and a continuance of the 
material benefits that Lord Cromer's administration 
had given to Egypt. There was no political unrest. 
But the increase in crime was alarming. The 
British Adviser in the Ministry of Justice, who had 
examined carefully the dossiers from all over the 
country stated that crime was in no sense due to 
poverty or to lack of means to lead an orderly life. 
The elections at the end of 19 13 were marked by a 
complete indifference of voters. Egypt was apathetic. 
The Egyptians were showing an annually increasing 
tendency to break the law. Murders and theft 
over-taxed police and judges. 



420 



CHAPTER XXI 

EGYPT BECOMES A BRITISH 
PROTECTORATE 

LITTLE was said about the Khedive in the 
last chapter: for there was little to say. 
He had reigned for over twenty years when 
the war of 1914 broke out; but he had not ruled. 
During the last ten years of the Cromer regime, 
Abbas Hilmi had frequently been troublesome. He 
had never been dangerous. In the man himself, 
the gambler's spirit was lacking. From the moment 
he arrived at the age to realize the humiliation of 
his position, he rebelled inwardly. Like the great 
majority of his fellow-countrymen, he detested the 
English, and wanted to get rid of them. But he 
was cowed by Lord Cromer: for he had been told 
plainly that opposition meant deposition. He had 
a splendid "berth" as Khedive of Egypt, — honors, 
money, palaces. To win power he would not risk 
privileges. 

Had there been no Nationalist movement and 
no pan-Islamic movement at the beginning of the 
twentieth century. Abbas Hilmi would have re- 
mained innocuous, and British Consuls-General 
could have continued to snap their fingers at him. 

421 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

But a ruler who put himself at the head of a popular 
movement could easily have been dangerous to the 
British administration. From the legal point of 
view and from the moral point of view, he would 
have had right on his side, and nowhere in Europe 
would public sentiment have rallied to his support 
more quickly and more generously than in the very 
country from which the intruders came. Abbas 
Hilmi missed a great opportunity of becoming ruler 
of Egypt when the Nationalist Party was in its 
hey-day. There would have been strength, and a 
glorious opportunity for Abbas Hilmi, also, had he 
come out boldly and staked his throne upon the 
question of loyalty and fulfillment of obligations to 
his suzerain, the Sultan of Turkey. He. had several 
excellent opportunities to put the British in an 
embarrassing position before the Moslem world 
and in the eyes of Europe as well. If the Khedive 
had come out openly as a supporter of the pan- 
Islamic movement, and had he refused to accede 
to Cromer's demands in connection v/ith the Sinai 
Peninsula controversy, the British would hardly 
have dared to depose him, and the Turks might have 
gained their point. There was much nervousness 
in British Cabinet Councils over the effect of the 
pan-Islamic agitation in India, and the new Parlia- 
ment was extremely Liberal. Lord Cromer had the 
good fortune to be dealing with a weakling. 

Sir Eldon Gorst tried to establish friendly rela- 
tions between the Palace and the British Agency. 
This he succeeded in doing, in spite of the change 
in the situation in Egypt after the Young Turk 

422 



EGYPT A BRITISH PROTECTORATE 

Revolution, which occurred in the second year of 
Sir Eldon's incumbency. There seemed to be a real 
attachment between the Khedive and the Consul- 
General. When Sir Eldon Gorst was dying, Abbas 
Hilmi made a visit to England to see him. For a 
while, the Nationalists, especially those of the moder- 
ate wing, had high hope that the Khedive would 
assert himself, and demand on behalf of his people a 
radical change in the humiliating policy of keeping 
Eg3^pt in complete political tutelage. When the 
Italian War brought Lord Kitchener once more to 
Egypt, Abbas Hilmi had his last chance to come out 
unequivocally on the Turkish side or to assure the 
British that they could count upon his loyalty. 
He did neither. He drifted along, suspected by the 
British of intriguing with their enemies, and hated 
by the Nationalists and Turks for failing in his duty 
as ruler of the nation and as vassal of the Sultan. 

Abbas Hilmi spent much time at his estates in 
Turkey, and was at his summer home on the Bos- 
phorus when the European War began. He refused 
to declare for the Allies, and stayed on in Turkey 
after the Turks decided to cast in their fortunes with 
the Germans. Like every one else who was in touch 
with what was happening at the Sublime Porte, 
Abbas Hilmi knew well enough, from the very be- 
ginning of the war, that the Young Turks intended 
to cast in the lot of the Ottoman Empire with the 
■ Central European Powers. A member of the Khe- 
divial family. Prince Said Halim, was the Sultan's 
Grand Vizier. Had Abbas Hilmi's past attitude 
been one of constant and courageous opposition to 

423 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the British occupation of his country, his defection 
might have had serious results for the British. As 
it was, the Khedive had become a neghgible quantity 
with his own subjects. The hotheads had tried 
twice to assassinate him. ^ The moderates knew that 
he was a hopeless barrier to getting any concessions 
from the British. It was the chance for Great 
Britain to depose the Khedive, and to establish a 
definite status by making Egypt a part of the British 
Empire. Abbas Hilmi's desertion of his country 
and his unpopularity among all classes of his subjects 
made his deposition easy. The state of war with 
Turkey dissolved Britain's obligations to the Sultan. 
Shortly after his deposition, I saw Abbas Hilmi 
in Vienna. He was cheerful and unruffled, and 
did not seem worried about having lost his throne. 
I think he was not at all misled by the hope that 
German victory would lead to his reinstatement in 
Cairo, rid of the British occupation. Like Abdul 
Aziz and Hafid in Morocco, his only preoccupation 
was the thought of the revenues from his estates.^ 
Of these he felt that he would be assured. Not 
only were the British just, but they knew how im- 
portant it was to purchase immunity from intrigues. 

^ The second attempt was in Constantinople on July 25, 1914, just 
a week before the war. The bullet hit the Khedive in the face. The 
assailant stated that he was moved by the desire to rid Egypt of a 
ruler who was betraying his people by refusing to lead them. 

' Hafid, whom the French had deposed in Morocco after they 
found that he would not work loyally with them under the Protec- 
torate, was consoled by a large pension. But he, like Abbas Hilmi, 
believed in the ultimate success of the Germans, and risked his pen- 
sion to cast in his fortunes with them. The last I heard of him he was 
living in a German milieu at Barcelona. 

424 



EGYPT A BRITISH PROTECTORATE 

Abbas Hilmi is like many a man born with a silver 
spoon in his mouth. He had homage and wealth 
through no effort of his own, and the joy of privi- 
leges was ample compensation for renouncing the 
glory of responsibilities. Will and ability are rarely 
handed down from father to son: the former is 
developed through necessity and the latter through 
effort. 

Lord Kitchener, also, was away from Egypt 
when the war broke out. He was needed at home 
for the greatest task of his life. During the first 
three months of the war, Egypt was forgotten in 
the tremendous march of events in Europe. I was 
in Paris during these months. My especial interest 
in the Near East led me to scan eagerly the news- 
papers for telegrams from Constantinople and 
Cairo. Only once was there mention of Egypt, when 
a news item, given out in London,- announced that 
it had been found necessary to intern Germans and 
Austrians. But the entry of Turkey into the war, 
and the defection of the Khedive, brought a new 
situation. From Berlin it was announced that the 
Turks were going to reoccupy Egypt. The import- 
ance of this menace was, of course, the Suez Canal. 
If the Germans could get control of the Canal, 
they would strike a more serious blow at the British 
Empire than by any other move they could make. 
I was in Berlin when the Egyptian campaign was 
being widely discussed in the press and in political 
circles. Great hopes were expressed, through the 
seizure of the Suez Canal, not only of winning the 
war by bringing Britain to her knees, quickly, 

425 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

but also of permanent German control of Asiatic 
commerce. 

Immediately upon receipt of the news in Cairo 
that hope had been abandoned of preventing Tur- 
key from joining Germany, the numerous Turkish 
agents and the dangerous agitators among the Egyp- 
tians were quietly gathered in by the police, and 
deported to Malta before they knew what had hap- 
pened. Sir John Maxwell, who was in command of 
the British Army of Occupation,^ was given full 
powers from London, and assured that the first 
Australian and New Zealand contingents would be 
started immediately to complete their training in 
Egypt. Other troops were sent out from England. 
Sir John Maxwell, like Lord Kitchener and Sir 
Reginald Wingate, was one of the "old guard" of 
British officers in the Egyptian army, who made 
their career in Egypt. He knew all the ins and outs 
of Egyptian life, and the attitude of the leading 
men toward the British occupation. He was one 
of those rare Englishmen who had won the affection 
of the Moslems. Bitter enemies of the English 
have assured me that Sir John was the type of man 

^ In 1906, the British forces were increased by a cavalry regiment, 
an artillery battery, and an infantry battalion. This increased the 
expense for the maintenance of the British troops, borne entirely 
by Egypt, from half a million to three quarters of a million dollars 
per annum. Cf. Mr. Haldane's speech in the House of Commons on 
July 5, 1910. One tremendous advantage that Great Britain en- 
joys from her colonial empire is the ability to have in training and 
ready for use, without any expense to the British taxpayers, soldiers 
and army officers and civilian officials. Many of Britain's most 
celebrated administrators and generals have been developed with 
very little, if any, expense to the budget. 

426 



EGYPT A BRITISH PROTECTORATE 

to popularize British rule in Egypt, if only there were 
more of his kind. He did not make the Egyptians 
feel that they were social inferiors. When he called 
the Bedouin Sheiks to the British Agency on Novem- 
ber 2, 1 914, and broke the news to them of the state 
of war with Turkey, he was talking to friends, and 
not to a group of men who bowed to his will only be- 
cause he had superior force. They agreed to stand 
by him. This was the beginning of Germany's 
deception concerning the Khalif's power over the 
Mohammedan world, which came to the climax 
eighteen months later in the rebellion of the Shereef 
of Mecca. ^ 

The great problem was to secure a new ruler for 
Egypt. It was known at this time that the Khedive 
would not return, and the news was a relief, for 
Abbas Hilmi would have been an embarrassment, 
if not a danger, to the British. Negotiations were 
opened with the uncle of the Khedive, Hussein 
Kamel, the eldest living representative of the family 
of Mohammed Ali. Under Mohammedan law he 
should have been the ruler of Egypt. Prince Hus- 
sein was in no hurry to accept the British overtures. 
He was a man of the old school, who had been from 
his youth a reader and a thinker. His culture was 
wholly French, and he could not speak English. 
His European experience and his European associa- 
tions were mostly with France. He had been in 

' The story of this far-reaching event, which is going to have a 
vital part in the relations of Imperial Britain and Imperial France 
with Islam, and in the future of Western and Central Asia, is treated 
in my New Map of A sia, now in preparation. 

427 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

exile in his youth, owing to differences of opinion 
with his father, the Khedive Ismail, and since the 
British occupation had abstained from mixing in 
politics. His passion was agriculture, and he had 
lived for thirty years the life of a country gentleman. 
Of all the princes of the khedivial family. Prince 
Hussein alone had abstained from entering the 
service of Abdul Hamid, and becoming contaminated 
by the degrading Yildiz Kiosk influences. He had 
no illusions about the hopeless degeneracy of the 
Turkish ruling caste, and the inability of the Young 
Turks to recreate a strong Islamic state in the spirit 
of Occidental and twentieth century civilization. 
On the other hand, he was thoroughly convinced 
that the inherent liberal spirit of the French and 
British nations made them the safe mentors and 
just guardians of Islamic interests. 

After six weeks of pourparlers, Prince Hussein 
consented to accept the rulership of Egypt under 
a British Protectorate. On December 17, 1914, the 
British Government announced that the relation 
between Turkey and Egypt was severed, and that 
Egypt was now a British Protectorate. Sir Henry 
McMahon was appointed High Commissioner. The 
next day Prince Hussein became Sultan of Egypt. 
I have had the honor and privilege of several long 
conversations with the Sultan, and have had from 
his own mouth the story of the negotiations of 
November and December, 1914, and the explanation 
of the motives that led the Sultan to accept the call 
to rule Egypt under British protection. The Sultan 
is a great admirer of Mohammed Ali, the founder of 

428 



EGYPT A BRITISH PROTECTORATE 

his House. He believes that it is his duty to carry 
out the program of Mohammed Ali, the two cardinal 
points of which were: complete separation from 
Turkey, and the introduction of Occidental civiliza- 
tion. The intention of Turkey to reconquer Egypt 
with the aid of Germany threatened to overthrow 
the successful achievement of Mohammed Ali in 
freeing Egypt from the Turkish yoke. The reten- 
tion and strengthening of the bond between Great 
Britain and Egypt was the best way of securing to 
the Egyptians the complete realization of the eco- 
nomic and social prosperity that had been- initiated 
by Mohammed Ali, and to which the ancestors of 
the Sultan had given their lives. 

The Khedive's Premier, Rushdi Pasha, rallied 
to the new regime, and consented to stay in office 
as head of the Sultan's Cabinet. Most of the lead- 
ing Egyptians followed his example. The idea of 
the permanency of the British occupation was far 
less distasteful than that of seeing the material 
prosperity of the country and the security of life 
and property jeopardized by a Germano-Turkish 
invasion. Even among the older pashas of Turkish 
origin, who hate the British cordially for having 
destroyed their power of exploiting the natives and 
their privilege of dipping into the public treasury, 
there was little joy at the thought of having to deal 
with the Young Turks. In no country in the world 
are conservatives in favor of a change in the status 
quo. The class that has wealth in lands and invest- 
ments, the class that has social prestige and privi- 
leges, and the class that holds public offices, stand 

429 



THE NEW MAP OF .AFRICA 

together to stand pat. I have been greatly amused 
in reading glowing accounts of Rumanians of Tran- 
sylvania, Italians of Trieste, Croatians of Agram, and 
other inhabitants of terre irredente, who burn to 
welcome delivering armies. Personal observation 
on the ground has taught me that in all the countries 
of whose nationalist and irredentist movements we 
hear so much, the prime movers and agitators are 
college professors and professional men and students, 
who have little or nothing to risk or lose by a change 
of government. The peasants feel the call of blood 
only after they have been worked upon and stirred 
up by priests and schoolmasters and paid political 
agents. The landowners and manufacturers and 
business men rarely allow their heart to run away 
with their head. They know which side their 
bread is buttered on. They worship the golden calf 
of the status qiio. In many countries, they have 
confessed this to me with frankness. Egypt is no 
exception to the general rule. 

The Turks tried hard to make an attack upon 
Egypt before the British were able to assemble 
sufficient troops for the defense of the Canal and 
for overhauling the Egyptians. General Maxwell 
felt it wise to recall the Egyptian garrisons and the 
initial British forces that had been sent to the Turk- 
ish frontier. They fell back to the Canal, leaving 
to the Turks the task of operating in the desert of 
the Isthmus and the mountainous and roadless 
Peninsula. The Turks reached the Canal with 
twelve thousand men on February 2, 19 15, and tried 
to force their way across at several points. They 

430 



EGYPT A BRITISH PROTECTORATE 

believed that if they once got into Egypt a popular 
movement would sweep the British out of the coun- 
try. But the guns of French and British warships, 
moored in the Canal, prevented the execution of this 
project. The risk had been too great, however, 
for the lesson not to be learned. Egypt was for- 
tunately on the way from Australasia to the battle- 
fields of Europe. During 191 5, it was made the 
training ground for Australians and New Zealanders, 
the half-way station for British and Indian troops 
on their way to and from India, and the base 
for the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia operations. 
Thus several hundred thousand men could be kept 
in the country all (the time, without immobilizing 
them. 

When the Turks fortified El Arish and Akaba, and 
began to build their railway to the Egyptian fron- 
tier, they spread the report broadcast in Egypt that 
they were coming back in force in 191 6 to deliver 
the captive province from the yoke of the infidel. 
In spite of a rigid censorship and an extensively 
organized secret service, news of the humiliating 
disasters inflicted upon the British by the Turks at 
Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia, and of the failure of 
the Salonika expedition to save Serbia, reached every 
village of Egypt. As prestige means everything to 
the Orientals, and as the British knew that their 
hold on Egypt was solely that of force, the beginning 
of 1 91 6 brought to the Suez Canal an army organiza- 
tion separate from that of the Army of Occupation. 
A new general arrived, with his own staff, and a 
system of defense was organized that would make it 

431 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

impossible for the Turks to reach the Canal a second 
time. I had the privilege of visiting these defenses. 
When the attack against Verdun called me back to 
France, I left a disappointed lot of Tommies and 
Colonials. There was some fighting on the western 
front against the Senussi; but the Canal remained 
farther from "the front" than Paris. During the 
spring and summer of 191 6, the British undertook 
to clear Egyptian territory, i. e., the Isthmus and 
the Peninsula, of the enemy. They did not get the 
revenge they longed for, the chance to meet the 
Turks when the tables, as far as geographical ad- 
vantages were concerned, were turned in British 
favor. 

The failure of the Turks to accomplish anything 
against Egypt counterbalanced the effect in jEgypt 
of Gallipoli and Mesopotamia. The mass of the 
Egyptians would have welcomed Turks and Ger- 
mans, had they invaded Egypt after a successful 
battle with the British forces. But they would 
have risked nothing until they were certain of the 
success of the invaders. Under no circumstances 
would the Egyptians have risked an uprising against 
the British. The internal security of Egypt depends 
upon the defense of the Canal. 

The present war was needed to convince the Brit- 
ish nation and the British dominions overseas of the 
necessity of making Egypt a permanent British 
possession. The Suez Canal is the artery binding 
India and Australasia to the Mother Country, and 
it was fitting that Indians and Australians and New 
Zealanders should have an important part in its 

432 



EGYPT A BRITISH PROTECTORATE 

defense. What would have happened had Britain 
yielded during the past thirty years to the insistent 
demands (the demands of some of her own states- 
men) to evacuate Egypt? After the lesson of this 
war, only the Britisher, who is a Little Englander 
and who wants to see the Empire disbanded, will 
argue for giving up Egypt. 

The attack on the Suez Canal made clear the 
destiny of Egypt, if Britain emerges from the war 
the victor. I did not hesitate to ask the Sultan 
what he expected would be Britain's attitude towards 
maintaining the Protectorate after the war. His 
answer was frank and unhesitating. "You need 
only to look at the British troops in Egypt, and to 
consider where they came from," said His Highness, 
"to realize how splendidly this war is proving the 
solidarity of the British Empire, and the importance 
of the Suez Canal to the British Empire. After the 
war, when Britain has demonstrated that she could 
hold by countless sacrifice of blood and treasure, in 
which the colonies fully cooperated, her great Empire 
intact, it is unlikely that the Suez Canal and Egypt 
will be less necessary to England than now or than 
before the war. I should not have accepted the 
Sultanate under British protection, had I not been 
loyal to, and sympathetic with, those whom long 
and intimate experience have taught me are the 
true friends of my people and of my family. I 
have consented to work, at the age of sixty-four, 
with the English for the regeneration of my coun- 
try, and for the fulfillment of the wonderful 
dreams for Egypt and her people that have come 
28 433 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

to me from my august ancestor, the founder of my 
House. "^ 

Success in securing a ruler from the khedivial 
family, and in keeping the country quiet during the 
trying periods of the beginning of the war, the Turk- 
ish attacks on the Canal, the Senussi raids, and the 
Gallipoli and Mesopotamia fiascoes, must not be 
interpreted by the British, however, as a sign of the 
loyalty of the Egyptians to the Protectorate and of 
their satisfaction with the past and present of British 
rule. I do not know what Egyptians may say to 
British friends and British journalists. It is prob- 
able that they are especially guarded in their obser- 
vations during war time. But they have spoken 
out of their heart to me. Without a single exception. 
Christians as well as Moslems, from extreme Anglo- 
philes to extreme Anglophobes, the Egyptians are 
dissatisfied with the way in which British rule has 
developed in Egypt, and sincerely and ardently 
desire a change. Sultan, Prime Minister, Cabinet, 
and notables, are at one in their demand that Egypt 
should have — and have immediately — a very much 
larger measure of self-government than has been 
allowed to her during the past. 

In 191 6, I noticed many changes from the Egypt 
of 1909, when Young Turks, Young Persians, and 
Young Egyptians had high hopes of establishing a 
constitutional regime in Moslem countries. There 

^ This interview in full, which was passed for publication by His 
Highness, was published in my correspondence to the New York 
and Paris editions of the New York Herald and the Philadelphia 
Evening Telegraph, January to March, 1916. 

434 



EGYPT A BRITISH PROTECTORATE 

is a difference of attitude toward many problems 
affecting national life: disillusionment in political 
matters; sadness in educational matters. But on 
one point there is no change. The opinion is exactly 
the same. The Egyptians resent the pretension of 
the British to manage their internal affairs for them. 
They want to get rid of the officials who have in- 
stalled themselves, not always tactfully, in the 
ministries as masters in every branch of administra- 
tion. They are like every other nation in the world 
in wanting to run their own affairs. They grant 
that they may run them badly for a while. But 
their argument is unanswerable. They ask you to 
point out a single nation in history that has evolved 
into a self-governing community without having 
gone through a long period of imperfection, mistakes, 
and errors, even of revolution and anarchy. The 
Egyptians have three serious charges against the 
system of ruling Egypt which Lord Cromer laid 
down. The impartial observer, with the facts 
before him, admits that these charges are amply 
substantiated. 

I. The British officials in Egypt do not put first 
the interests of the country in which they are living, 
from which they draw their salaries, and whose Sultan 
they are supposed to be serving. 

The system of having the internal affairs of a na- 
tion managed by men whose allegiance is to the sover- 
eign of another nation and who take their orders, not 
from the Sultan and his Cabinet, but from a foreign 
official, is pernicious in the extreme, and bound to 
have disastrous results in the long run. Until it is 

435 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

changed, no reasonable man can blame the Egyptians 
for saying that they are in the position of a conquered 
race, held in bondage by force. Their masters may 
take care of them in the best way possible, looking 
after their subjects' interests, and giving them bene- 
fits that they would not have if they looked after 
their own interests. But they are in bondage all the 
same. Is it not an Anglo-Saxon maxim that just 
government derives its authority from the consent of 
the governed? 

2. The British officials do not feel and care for 
Egypt and the Egyptians as it is essential they should 
feel and care to fill properly their positions. 

The great majority of the officials have no interest 
in the "natives." They dislike them, and speak 
disparagingly of them. They tell you frankly 'that 
their motive for being in Egypt is to serve British 
interests and draw their pay. They resent the fact 
that they are disliked, although they make little 
effort to be liked ; are impatient with the folly of the 
natives for not knowing a good thing (the British 
administration) when they see it; and are angry at 
what they term Egyptian ingratitude. The few who 
have given their lives to Egypt, and have actually 
shown proof of self-sacrifice and devotion, are 
grieved over the lack of appreciation they receive 
from the people. It is hard to get under the skin of 
a Britisher. He feels that he is a superior being. 
As he is wholly indifferent about your attitude to- 
wards him he never bothers his head about what 
you are thinking of him. Other nations frequently 
speak of a British attitude as ' ' deliberately insulting. 

436 



EGYPT A BRITISH PROTECTORATE 

That is not true. It is farthest from the British 
mind to be insulting. The action in question is 
instinctive — not thought out or willed. An English- 
man of the upper class would be the most surprised 
man in the worid if he discovered that you thought he 
was not acting considerately and courteously. There 
is no more charming thoroughbred in the world than 
the English gentleman — to those whom he knows. 
Those whom he does not know are nonentities to him, 
and if he were to think the matter out, he would 
arrive at the conclusion that he does not see why he is 
not a nonentity to them also. The reasoning is this : 
he does not bother me. Why should I bother him ? 

One afternoon in Shepheard's Hotel, an officer who 
belonged to a London regiment and whose accent 
was South England to perfection, was disconcerted 
and provoked when I asked him a question about 
Melbourne. "How did you know that I was an 
Australian?" he asked. "By the way you walked 
through the hall," I answered. "You looked at 
people with evident interest as you came toward me. 
Had your Oxford accent been innate and not acquired 
you would have seen no one in the hall." The 
British official in the African colonies is generally a 
gentleman, with the temperamental limitations of his 
class. He voices the mental attitude of Great Bri- 
tain in her dealings with other nations. He never 
considers for one moment the fact that other in- 
dividuals than himself, and other races than his own, 
have, and have a right to, amour propre. 

With untutored savages and with peasants, the 
British attitude goes. Only when there is the ele- 

437 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

ment of injustice — as at Denshawai — do the unedu- 
cated classes rebel against it. But the upper class 
Egyptians, who have blood and traditions and educa- 
tion, hate like poison the way most Englishmen 
treat them. They tell me that they do not blame the 
Englishman for his views and his temperament. 
But they do blame him for forcing those views and 
that temperament upon them in their own country. 

3. As the civil service has developed, the British 
Government has not been able to send a uniformly high 
class of officials to Egypt. The Egyptians are made to 
accept in many official positions men whose mental 
caliber would not enable them to Jill similar positions 
in Great Britain. 

This is undoubtedly true. I have seen numerous 
examples of it. The Egyptian civil service has in it 
many splendid men. But there are others who are 
decidedly second rate. The Egyptians are very 
quick to recognize the second-rate man. If a man 
has marked ability and splendid training, or is a 
thoroughbred, and if there is confidence in his in- 
tegrity and in his sense of justice, respect and even 
admiration will be given to him. He may be dis- 
liked ; but his authority will be acknowledged. It is 
a lamentable injustice and abuse of power, however, 
to put over a weaker nation, in positions of superior 
authority, men whose judgment and training are 
inferior to those to whom they give orders. There 
is a striking case of this at the present time in one 
of the Egyptian ministries. The adviser in question 
has many warm supporters among the British in 
Egypt, but, when I put the question straight, I 

438 



EGYPT A BRITISH PROTECTORATE 

never found one who would not admit that in Eng- 
land this adviser could not possibly obtain a position 
such as the one in which the Egyptians are compelled 
to defer to his judgment and his decisions. And it is 
a position second to none, from the Egyptian stand- 
point, in importance in uplifting their nation! 

I have tried to show in this volume how much the 
British Empire owes to the class of men England, of 
all nations, is alone able to send abroad in great 
number for colonial military and administrative 
positions. But the supply, as the case of Egypt 
shows, was not unlimited before the war. ' It is un- 
fortunately the very class that has suJEfered most 
heavily during the past two years. The British 
Government cannot hope to replace soon the men 
who have fallen in Flanders, Gallipoli, and Meso- 
potamia. 

It would seem to the outside observer, then, not 
only that the British should be very slow to assume 
new and extensive colonial responsibilities, but also 
that they should endeavor, wherever possible, to 
retrench in the using of the best element of the 
British nation. Never has there been a demand far 
in excess of the supply, because the upper class has 
placed self-imposed restrictions upon its field of 
activity. A new condition will confront the British 
Government after the war. 

My space is too limited to discuss the international 
problem that Great Britain has to face in regularizing 
her position in Egypt. Since fifteen Governments 
have by treaty a privileged position in Egypt, it will 
be necessary to treat with them all to secure their 

439 



\ 

\ 

THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

consent to the abolition of the capitulations and to 
the establishment of the Protectorate. The negotia- 
tions to this end may demand in some cases the offer- 
ing of compensations. But they ought not to be 
difficult. British administration of justice, British 
handling of finances, and British principles of equal 
tariffs and the open door are sufficient guarantee that 
the new status quo, far from injuring foreign residents 
or merchants, will be distinctly to their advantage. 

The great problem is that of the internal govern- 
ment of Egypt. Great Britain will have the acquies- 
cence and support of the Egyptians in leaving in her 
hands entirely the foreign relations of Egypt and all 
matters relating to the Canal and to the zone between 
the Canal and the Ottoman Empire. For it is freely 
recognized by all that British Imperial interests 
demand, and have a right to demand, that the Suez 
Canal be under British control. But no Egyptians, 
as far as I have been able to ascertain, are going to 
support the present humiliating system of internal 
administration. Since they are unable to overthrow 
it, they may have to continue to tolerate it. One 
hopes, however, that British statesmen will see that 
the interest of the Empire is best served by letting 
the Egyptians have the same chance that their own 
forebears had of working out political salvation. 



440 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE CREATION OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN 
UNION 

ONE summer afternoon, when I was indulging 
in my favorite recreation of rummaging in 
the stalls of the second-hand booksellers along 
the Seine quays in Paris, I came across a little duo- 
decimo volume of less than three hundred pages, 
which bore the title : Woman, Her Past, Her Present^ 
and Her Future. Even to an eighteenth-century 
author, who Hved long before the days of feminism, 
the project of telling all about women in one little 
book must have appeared ambitious, unless he were 
a bachelor or a monk. I was amused at the temerity 
or ignorance of the writer. I feel that I am laying 
myself open to a similar criticism in trying to discuss 
the South African Union in one small chapter of a 
book covering all of Africa. But some mention must 
be made, even if it be of an incomplete and summary 
character, of the formation of a great European state 
out of territories colonized by white men. Only in 
South Africa has Europe been able to become in- 
digenous, racially and politically. 

In his farewell speech, when he resigned the High 
Commissionership of the South African colonies, 

441 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Lord Milner called upon the people to be faithful to 
the idea of imperial unity, which alone would solve 
the most difficult and persistent problem of South 
Africa. "The Dutch can never own perfect al- 
legiance to Great Britain," he said, "but the British 
and Dutch aHke can unite in loyal devotion to an 
Empire state in which Britain and South Africa are 
partners. The true Imperialist is also the best 
South African." These remarkable words, uttered 
by a man who never failed to see clearly into the 
heart of a problem, expressed the conviction that 
came to moderate Dutch and moderate British 
after the Transvaal and the Orange Free State were 
granted responsible government. 

The work of the Colonial Convention, assembled to 
agree upon the form of union and the constitution, 
extended over eighteen months. There were many 
particular interests to be considered, and several 
crises arose, which threatened to wreck the project 
altogether. Both Natal and the Transvaal showed 
an uncompromising spirit, and a perfect willingness 
to refuse to come in, if what they called their rights 
and interests were not taken into account. Cape 
Colony had a negro franchise. The Orange Free 
State, being very markedly Boer, held out on the educa- 
tion question. In the end, however, the four colonies 
were able to agree. Their decision was hastened by 
the railway question and the tariff war, of which 
we have spoken in a previous chapter. Rhodesia 
stayed out. The conditions of union were formu- 
lated by the colonies themselves, and presented to 
the Home Government merely for sanction, and not 

442 



THE SOUTH AFRICAN UNION 

for decision or revision. All these conditions, except 
the question of the inclusion of the native protecto- 
rates, were sine qua non. This was clearly impressed 
upon the Imperial Parliament, when the Bill for 
union was presented. Delegates representing the 
different elements and parties in South Africa were 
present in the House of Lords and the House of 
Commons when the Bill was read. Some of the provi- 
sions were distasteful to Parliament. Opposition was 
strong, however, only against the provision which ex- 
cluded from the Union Parliament and governing func- 
tions persons who were not "of European descent." 
Only because the Imperial Parliament was given 
clearly to understand that striking out this provision 
would wreck the Union were the Liberals induced to 
allow it to stand. The native franchise stood for the 
province of Cape Colony. But even that could be 
taken away by two-thirds vote of the Commonwealth 
Parliament. As changes in the constitution were 
subject to the veto of the King, the Radicals were, 
persuaded that this franchise was not in jeopardy./* 
The "Union of South Africa" was formed by Royal] 
Proclamation on December 2, 1909, and Herbert 1 
Gladstone, raised to the peerage, was appointed as 
first Governor. 

From this moment. South Africa became a self- ' 
governing dominion of the British Empire, like f 
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Direct author- 
ity of the Crown remained only in the protectorates, 
of which we have spoken previously; but they were 
eventually to be transferred to the Union. Seven 
years after the close of the Boer War, Boer and Briton 

443 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

/- were united in a common effort, with common 
privileges and responsibilities, to work out the desti- 
nies of European civilization in South Africa. The 
Union is the most remarkable achievement of 
I British statesmanship in the history of the Empire. 
It was possible only because the Home Government 
had the courage to grant responsible government to 
the former Boer republics, and the wisdom to refuse 
to override the decisions of the colonies in regard to 
their particular interests and their common interests. 
It proves the peculiar genius of Anglo-Saxondom 
for creating and fostering democratic institutions. 
' The British are very far from being' democrats from 
/ the social point of view. Politically, they have estab- 
I lished the only real democracy that exists in the 
/ world to-day. 

I One finds ever3rwhere in Africa a refutation of the 
^ argument so often heard in the United States against 
. government ownership of railways. Great financial 
benefit has come to almost every European colony 
in Africa where the Government has from the begin- 
ning exploited the railways, or has later taken them 
over from private corporations. Especially is this 
' true in South Africa. Cape Colony and Natal, as 
well as the two Dutch republics, own their railways. 
When the Union was formed, common state owner- 
ship and state management was instituted without 
a hitch. There were no private interests, influencing 
legislators, to be considered. The South African 
railways are free from concessions. Even the re- 
freshment privilege, which used to be farmed out, 
has been taken over by the State. Capital for rail- 

444 



THE SOUTH AFRICAN UNION 

way construction is raised by increase of the state 
debt, and purely public considerations dictate rail- 
way extension. Not only are the railways in the 
South African Union self-supporting, as in the Sudan 
and almost everywhere else in Africa ; but after inter- 
est charges on the capital invested and expenses of 
management are paid, the State has a very large 
surplus for the purposes of the general budget. A 
study of the statistics of the various lines reveals the 
advantage of the common wealth to the Common- 
wealth. The Cape and Free State railways are run 
at a loss. The coal and Rand lines of the Transvaal 
pay the deficit. This enables the State to maintain 
existing and to develop new lines on a sound eco- 
nomic basis. When the country that is being opened 
up by the railways is developed, the new lines will 
become self-supporting, and the financial advantage 
will accrue to the State. Some of them, whose con- 
struction was dictated in the beginning by political 
considerations, would have been built by private 
capital only under conditions that would later have 
proved onerous to the State. As it is, the people 
will possess the values they have themselves created. 
Inhabitants of the Transvaal, who view the railway 
question from a selfish local point of view, complain 
that they are being mulcted to afford the Cape 
Colony and Free State people the luxury of better 
railway service than their present resources and 
earning capacity give them the right to expect. If 
living were only from day to day, the complaint 
would be just. But the Transvaal enjoys reciprocal 
advantages from its membership in the Union. 

445 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

There is unhampered access to the sea for the land- 
locked colony. Food products, wood, and other 
materials necessary for the Transvaal's development 
are received without the duties that might have been 
imposed, had the members of the Union continued 
their separate existence. 
/' Since the union, South Africa has not made much 
I progress in solving the negro question. Between the 
I census of 1904 and 191 1, the native population in- 
/ creased more rapidly than the white. The Euro- 
peans passed from 1,117,000 to 1,276,000; natives 
from 4,059,000 to 4,697,000. If the protectorates 
had been included, the proportion of whites to blacks 
in South Africa would have been less than fifteen 
per cent. Without the protectorates, it is scarcely 
more than twenty per cent. The policy advocated 
by General Hertzog and a large portion of the 
Afrikanders to establish distinct zones of settlement 
for natives, wholly aside from the formidable storm 
of protest that would have greeted such a measure in 
England, was hardly a practicable suggestion. The 
Crown lands, though large in extent, are mostly 
barren and far from railways. A bill to segregate 
the blacks in this way was presented to the Union 
Parliament in 19 14. It had the weakness of all 
attempts on the part of white men to "give" natives 
a portion of what they have taken from them. 
It failed to provide either sufficient land or the right 
sort of land, and would have been as crying an in- 
justice as the disgraceful — I might better say con- 
temptible — Indian reservation bills of the United 
States. It was also open to the grave suspicion of 

446 



THE SOUTH AFRICAN UNION 

being a measure inspired by the Boer farmers to get 
cheap labor: for had the bill passed, the blacks of 
many regions, especially in the Orange River, would 
have been at the mercy of the farmers. The supply 
of mining and agricultural labor in other parts of the 
Union would have been depleted. From the point 
of view of safety, also, segregation of natives seems 
unwise in a country where they are in so great a 
numerical superiority to colonists and increasing 
more rapidly than colonists. One feels that the 
South Africans are safe without having to keep on 
foot a large military and police force only because 
the blacks are scattered. ^ 

The negro problem in South Africa is unfortunately ' 
developing in the same way that it has developed in j 
the American Southern States. With the advance of i 
civilization and the disappearance of slavery, giving 
to the blacks freedom of movement and the right to 
vote, social antagonism, with its evils and its dis- 
tressing manifestations, has arisen. When negroes > 
come into the enjoyment of economic and political ^ 
equality, they feel keenly the withholding of thei 
social equality that it is not in the nature of the white ^ 
man to grant. The advocacy of segregation on a 
wholesale scale is the logical development of local 
segregation. Custom, sanctioned by law, enforces ( 
separate transportation facilities, separate schools, ' 
separate residence quarters, separate hotels, and sepa- 
rate restaurants. To the educated and refined 
negroes, travel is hell. How can they help suffering 

^ Rhodesia was very hostile to this bill, fearing its passage would 
result in a wholesale exodus northward of blacks and poor whites. 

447 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

from being made pariahs? Others, who through no 
fault of their own have not white blood in their veins, 
are driven by their social ostracism to become 
criminals. When one studies this problem from the 
psychological point of view, the frequency of the 
unspeakable crime is not surprising. Adequate pro- 
tection of the white woman is the nightmare of South 
Africa fully as much as of the American Southern 
States. When Lord Gladstone revised the death 
sentence in a Rhodesian rape case, he found that 
white men who lived in communities where they were 
outnumbered or equalled by negroes would never 
admit the possibility of extenuating circumstances in 
a crime of this sort. His ignorance or lack of appre- 
ciation of local conditions led him to commit an 
unpardonable blunder. There was a howl of in- 
dignation from one end of South Africa to the 
other. 
) European civilization has brought also to South 
( Africa the war between capital and labor, which has 
; developed in exactly the same way as in all states 
where there is universal manhood suffrage. As we 
have explained in describing the problems of South 
Africa before the union, the early days of the labor 
movement on the Rand were not very successful, be- 
cause there was no unemployment, and because the 
native labor question, with its social side, complicated 
the problem. Later, the white men engaged in min- 
ing grew to the number of nearly fifty thousand, and 
there were a hundred and fifty thousand European 
industrial workers scattered throughout the Union. 
The emigrants to the Transvaal from England were 

448 



THE SOUTH AFRICAN UNION 

almost all of them strong trades-union men, and 
brought their ideas and their propaganda with them, 
although British imperialism, even in the new country, 
was anathema to them. They fraternized with the 
Boers who had drifted from the farms to the cities. In- 
ternational socialism took no account of racial antago- 
nism between Briton and Boer. In the last general 
election the Labor party returned four members to 
the Union Parliament. There have been strikes in I 
South Africa, and very serious labor riots. The ( 
police and military had to be called out in Johannes- i 
burg in 1913, and there was street fighting- that re- ' 
suited in considerable loss of life. Seventy per cent, 
of the rioters were Afrikanders, but all the leaders 
were English. Most of them, like Bain and Crawford, 
had been in America, and brought to the' solution of 
South African labor problems methods they learned 
in Colorado and West Virginia. 

From the first days of the Union, General Botha 
has been the commanding figure in South Africa, 
and General Smuts has been the loyal coadjutor of 
General Botha. The Boers formed a majority of 
the electorate in the Cape, the Orange Free State, 
and the Transvaal. They form a majority- of the 
electorate in the Union. It is clear, then, that from 
the moment the Boer War disenfranchisements were 
terminated in the Cape, and the two former republics 
were granted self-government, there was no hope of 
an imperial policy except by the aid of the Boers 
themselves. Had the Boers all been recalcitrant and 
unwilling to consider that they had anything to give 
to or receive from the British Empire, self-govern- 
29 449 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

merit would inevitably have led to civil war and the 
revoking of the constitutions, or complete separation 
from Great Britain. ^ But General Botha as Premier 
of the Transvaal, and Mr. Merriman as Premier of 
the Cape Colony, formed Boer parties that were 
favorable to a South African Union under the British 
flag, and to reconciliation with the British element 
in the colonies. 

^ Lord Gladstone offered General Botha the premier- 
ship of the Union of South Africa until a general election 
' could be held. A coalition ministry was proposed, 
with the inclusion of Dr. Jameson and some of the 
British party, but General Botha was keen enough to 
realize that if he took the English into his bosom, he 
would estrange much of the Boer support he needed 
to carry out the reconciliation program he had in mind. 
So he made General Smuts Minister of the Interior, 
and included General Hertzog, who represented the 
extreme Boer party of the Orange Free State. Gen- 
eral Botha stated that his program would be: the 
unification of the white population, sympathetic 
treatm.ent of natives and colored persons, the preven- 



* The Dutch Reformed Church has a membership of nearly seven 
hundred thousand, more than half the total population of European 
descent in South Africa and Rhodesia combined. The official 
census figures of 1904 and 191 1 show that the population of the Orange 
Free State increased more than five times as fast as the population 
of Cape Colony and Natal. The Transvaal increased over four 
times as fast. The Boers have much larger families than the British. 
Their distribution, also, is stronger. They are not congregated in 
cities. They have lands and permanent sources of wealth. Unfor- 
tunately, the alarmingly large class of "poor whites" has a large 
Anglo-Saxon element in it. 



THE SOUTH AFRICAN UNION 

tion of Asiatic immigration, a broad and conciliatory- 
educational policy, and everything that would tend 
to a rapid economic development. 

In the general election on September 15, 1910, ' 
General Botha's Nationalist party, comprised wholly/ 
of Boers, carried 67 out of 121 seats. So he had| 
a majority over the British, the irreconcilable^ 
Boers, and the labor members combined. We can-/ 
not go into the political history of the next few years. 
General Botha was greatly helped in keeping down 
racial animosity by the splendid attitude of Dr. 
Jameson, who had the political wisdom- and the 
patriotism to continue to support unwaveringly 
General Botha after the coalition ministry project 
was refused by Botha. Dr. Jameson had to resist 
the pressure of his political friends, and to stand the 
criticism of the British section of the press. It is 
not too much to say that Dr. Jameson's policy was 
almost as important a factor in making the Union 
successful as General Botha's. These two men were 
imbued with the spirit of "live and let live. " They 
had rare moral courage in the midst of the passion 
and prejudice and blindness of many of their political 
associates. 

In 1913, the split that had long been expected V 
among the Boers was made definite by the with- 
drawal of General Hertzog from the Botha Minis- 
try. A new party was formed, which called itself 
the National party. General Botha's moderate 
Boers preferred the title of South African party. 
Although General Hertzog, who was at one time a' 
judge in the Free State, has always remained a fanati- 

451 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

cal Afrikander and has never abandoned the early 
Krugerism in his attitude toward the uitlanders, he 
has unconsciously — perhaps involuntarily — devel- 
oped by his intimate contact with the English social 
graces and a breadth of vision. It is impossible to 
believe that his fanatical opposition to the imperial 
deal reflects his own sober judgment. The benefit 
that South Africa receives from British sovereignty, 
the inevitable triumph of English over Taal, and the 
impossibility of reviving the old pastoral simplicity 
of Boer life must certainly be realized by a man of his 
keen intellectual gifts. What one honestly believes, 
and the position one assumes in public for sentimental 
and political reasons, are often radically different. 
General Hertzog, unlike General Christian De Wet, 
did not involve himself in the rebellion of 1914. 
But he was outspoken in his opposition to a South 
African campaign against the German colonies, to 
the Enemy Trading Bill, and to proposals to interne 
German subjects in the Union and put their property 
under sequestration. 

In the general election of 191 5, General Botha lost 
thirteen seats, and continues to hold office only by 
the support of the British party. The political situa- 
tion is very much involved at present, owing to the 
unusual external and internal problems aroused by 
the war. At present, General Botha is between two 
fires. Many Boers believe that he is too British, and 
is sacrificing the interests of South Africa to those of 
a decadent and disappearing Empire. Most of the 
British tell him that he has not the backbone to be 
loyal in the sense they have of that word. Recently, 

452 



THE SOUTH AFRICAN UNION 

in desperation, when he was being pressed to disre- 
gard the Boer opposition to the measure to increase 
the pay given to South African contingents in the 
Imperial army, General Botha turned to the British 
members of his Parliament, and cried, "You ought 
not to press me! You know I am standing on 
the brink of a volcano. " If they have any sense, the 
British in South Africa will not press too hard the 
man to whom they owe the fact that their flag is 
still waving throughout the Union. 



453 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE REBELLION IN SOUTH AFRICA AND 
ITS AFTERMATH 

/ A T a special session of the Union Parliament on 

ZA September 14, 19 14, a resolution was passed 

I by ninety-two to twelve declaring that the 

House was whole-heartedly determined "to take all 
/measures necessary for defending the interests of 

the Union and for cooperating with his Majesty's 

Imperial Government to maintain the security and 
/ integrity of the Empire. " But even the loyal Dutch 

of the Commonwealth were for the most part opposed 
I to an expedition into German Southwest Africa. 

They felt, for they knew their countrymen; that it 
' was asking too much of the Boers to call upon them 
' to be aggressively British, and to fight, when they 
' were not being molested, for the interests of the 

Empire of which they were an unwilling part. Their 

fears were immediately justified. 

General Beyers, Commander-General of the Union 
/Defense Force, resigned the day after the close of the 
j special session of Parliament. His letter of resigna- 
' tion expressed surprise at Great Britain's newly 

awakened anxiety to protect small nations. As a 

Boer, it was impossible for him to believe that the 

454 



THE REBELLION IN SOUTH AFRICA 

reasons given for British interference to save Belgium 
were anything else than hypocritical cant. 

When Beyers was called a traitor by the English 
section of the press, Boer loyalists, although they 
considered the tone of Beyers's letter a bit strong, 
declared that he was a man whose honesty could not 
be doubted, and that he had acted from the purest 
motives. It is difficult to judge the working of the 
mind of a man who believes he is a patriot. For the 
sake of his country, almost any man lies and dis- 
simulates, exonerating himself on the ground of 
patriotism. Beyers probably thought he was doing 
what was right. But certainly his action would have 
been less open to suspicion of bad faith had he 
resigned the post which bound him to British alle- 
giance before the British troops had been withdrawn 
for service in Europe, and before he had taken part 
in the councils that planned the campaign against 
German Southwest Africa. General Smuts, in 
accepting the resignation of Beyers, pointed out that 
the plan of operations decided upon had been 
recommended by Beyers, and that there was no hint 
given by Beyers, when the campaign was discussed, of 
his opposition to a campaign against the Germans or 
of his intention to resign. General Smuts denounced 
General Beyers also for having communicated the 
letter of resignation to the press before it was given 
to the Government, and for his insinuation that the 
loan of £7,000,000 granted to South Africa by 
the Imperial Parliament was a bribe to induce the 
Commonwealth to take part in the war. 

The campaign against the Germans, which is 
455 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

described in another place, had already begun when 
Lieutenant-Colonel Maritz, who commanded the 
force in the northwest of Cape Colony, rebelled. 
On October 8th, Maritz refused to acknowledge an 
order relieving him of his command, and imprisoned 
the men who brought the order. Their commander, 
Major Bouwer, who was sent back with an ultimatum 
from Maritz, reported that the traitor had German 
guns and a German force at his command, and was 
sending as prisoners into German Southwest Africa 
all the Union officers and men who refused to de- 
nounce their allegiance to Great Britain. Martial 
law was immediately proclaimed throughout the 
Commonwealth. 

There is no doubt that the great majority of the 
Boers of the Orange Free State, and possibly a good 
half of those in the Transvaal and the Afrikander 
districts of Cape Colony, were potential rebels. 
British authority in the Commonwealth depended 
upon the loyalty of the more important of the Afri- 
kander leaders, and particularly upon General Botha 
and General Smuts. It is not too much to say that 
if these two men had adopted the same attitude as 
General Hertzog, South Africa would have thrown 
off British allegiance, or at least would have made 
impossible the expedition against German South- 
west Africa. 

Maritz's action, on the other hand, would have 
had no serious results were it not for the defection 
of General Beyers and General Christian De Wet. 
For his commando was routed and fled into German 
territory in less than three weeks. But at that 

456 



THE REBELLION IN SOUTH AFRICA 

moment rebellion broke out in the Orange Free 
State and in Western Transvaal, De Wet command- 
ing in the former and Beyers in the latter. 

On October 21st, General Christian De Wet made 
a speech at Verde, a town in the north of the Free 
State, in which he declared that though he had 
"signed the Vereeniging Treaty and sworn to be 
faithful to the British flag, the Boers had been so 
downtrodden by the miserable and pestilential 
English that they could endure it no longer. His 
Majesty King Edward VII. had promised to protect 
them and had failed to do so. " When De Wet and 
Beyers took the field, they were joined by three 
members of the Union Parliament, and by Mr. Wessel 
Wessels, a member of the Defense Cou)icil of the 
Union. Preachers of great influence in the Dutch 
Church went through the country calling upon the 
people to take arms against the British. Among the 
Dutch clergy a statement was circulated in which 
Maritz was warmly defended. In this statement one 
finds a sentence which furnishes food for thought 
to those in England to-day who are cursing the 
memory of Sir Roger Casement and failing to lay 
any blame whatever upon Sir Edward Carson for 
what has happened recently in Ireland 

"Next year (19 15) it will be twenty years since 
Jameson made his raid on the Transvaal to steal our 
coiintry, to kill our Government, to destroy our 
existence as a people, and in addition our nationality 
forever, and in aU that time we have never had the 
good fortune to meet a single Englishman or English- 
woman who condemned the raid, not to speak of 

457 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

detestation and of making Jameson out to be what 
Maritz is now being made out to be. " 

The manifesto of the rebelHon was signed by 
Beyers, De Wet, Maritz, Wessels, Pienaar, and 
Fourie. It has not been pu^bHshed in the press, and 
is worth quoting, to indicate what the rebels had in 
mind 

"When we iSubscribed to the Treaty of 'Vereeniging 
and laid down our arms, we were a crushed and beaten 
people, driven to the verge of starvation and despair 
by the dishonorable tactics of a vigorous and power- 
ful enemy — our resources exhausted and our homes 
destroyed — but we accepted the inevitable, and were 
content to forego our nationhood and oyr liberties 
for the sake of the future of our people. We were 
prepared to keep our allegiance to Great Britain, as 
long as we could do so v/ith honor to ourselves and 
without ingratitude to our friends. Now, however, 
we are called upon to choose between this doubtful 
claim upon our loyalty to a relentless conqueror, and 
our gratitude to a friendly nation, which extended its 
sympathy and help in the time of danger. We are 
being betrayed into this act of base ingratitude 
either by the folly or treachery of our own Govern- 
ment. Was it not enough to ask us to forget the 
terrible scenes we witnessed a few years ago, either 
as men on the field of battle, fighting for our hard- 
won freedom, or as youths flying with our despairing 
women-folk from our burning homesteads, or in the 
concentration camps seeing them dying in thousands 
around us, but must we now be compelled to take up 
arms against a nation that gave us a helping hand in 
our troubles, and plunge our people into the horrors 
of an extremely doubtful European War? For our 
part we are prepared to shed the last drop of blood 

458 



THE REBELLION IN SOUTH AFRICA ] 

rather than be guilty of such cowardly baseness, and 
we call on all those who love honor and friendship 
and gratitude to assist us in resisting it. We have no 
wish to shed the blood of the people of South Africa, 
English or Dutch — far from it — but we must em- 
phatically declare that the members of the present 
Government have betrayed their trust, and no longer 
represent the real feelings of the people of South 
Africa. We most emphatically declare it to have 
been a gross libel on the honor of his countrymen for 
General Botha to lead the Imperial Government to 
believe that the Afrikander people were willing to 
enter into active and unprovoked hostilities against 
the German nation, with which they had no possible 
quarrel, and to which, indeed, they are closely united 
by ties of blood, friendship, and of gratitude. It was 
clearly his duty to inform the Imperial Government 
that, while it could rely upon their passive loyalty 
and obedience, it was too much to expect that they 
would willingly and openly invade German territory. 
The consequence, therefore, of the present civil strife 
must rest, morally, at any rate, on his shoulders and 
those of his Government. For ourselves, we shall 
not lay down our arms until the Government is 
removed from office, and all idea of invading German 
territory is frankly abandoned. We are fully aware 
of the gravity of our position, but no other course 
consistent with honor was open to us, and we leave 
our motives to be finally judged by the honorable 
instinct of all men. Expediency may demand that 
we be regarded and treated as rebels, but justice and 
truth will always proclaim our conduct as inspired 
by the truest patriotism. We do not desire to set 
up a Republic or any other form of Government, 
against the wishes of the majority of our fellow- 
citizens. All we ask is that the people as a whole be 
allowed to say whether or not they wish to declare 
war against Germany, or any other nation. We wish 

459 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

to govern ourselves in our own way without fraud 
or coercion from anyone, and we call upon the 
people to assist us in attaining that ideal. " 

The rebellion was crushed by the energy and 
decision of General Botha and General Smuts, who 
put unhesitatingly all the weight of their influence 
with the moderate section of the Afrikanders and of 
their military skill and organizing ability into the 
task. General Smuts recalled part of the little army 
that had been sent to occupy the coast towns of 
German Southwest Africa, and succeeded in raising 
in three weeks thirty thousand armed volu,nteers, 
most of them Boers. General Hertzog and ex- 
President Steyn, whose allegiance was doubtful, 
realized immediately that the rebellion would not 
succeed, and did everything in their power to open 
up negotiations between the Government and the 
rebels. But General Smuts, master of the situation 
when he saw that the rebels could not muster more 
than ten thousand armed men and had to depend 
upon a junction with the Germans for ammunition, 
cannon, and reinforcements, declared that he could 
not treat with rebels. They must be run to the 
ground and forced to surrender unconditionally. 

So prompt was the action of the loyalist forces that 
the rebels were never able to form a junction of their 
own commandos, much less to get in touch with the 
Germans. Only a few hundred men with General 
Kemp were able to reach German territory. Within 
seven weeks all the Boers in arms, except those who 
got away with Kemp, were killed, captured, or sur- 

460 



THE REBELLION IN SOUTH AFRICA. 

rendered voluntarily. General Beyers was drowned 
in trying to cross the Vaal River on December 9th. 
At the end of December the last rebels were dispersed. 
About seven thousand in all had surrendered or were 
captured. 

On the day the rebellion was announced, a promi- 
nent Transvaal Boer said: ''Without organization, 
arms, ammunition, or supplies; without a known 
grievance or cause, or definite aim; without a com- 
mon plan or an acknowledged leader; they move, 
like the ants, the locusts, and the springbok, as if an 
unknown law of nature compelled it. Who can 
understand the Boers? They are my people, but 
they beat me!"^ On the whole, the observation of 
this British sympathizer (probably an official) was 
just. In one particular, however, he was wrong. 
There was a "known grievance." There was a 
"cause. " There was a "definite aim" — not definite 
from the military point of view, but certainly definite 
politically. I have taken the pains to read through a 
great deal of polemical literature on this subject. 
There is still much confusion, much contradiction of 
fact, and too little perspective to get a comprehen- 
sive idea of what happened in South Africa only two 
years ago. But certain facts do stand forth uncon- 
tradicted. And, in looking at the rebellion of 19 14 
from the point of view of what preceded it and what 

^ I am indebted to an anonymous writer in the Round Table 
(London) for March and September, 191 5, and June, 19 16, for valu- 
able articles on the background and consequences of the rebellion. 
They are admirably and sanely written, as are all the articles of this 
indispensable review. 

461 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

has followed it, there is possibihty of forming a 
judgment that may not need radical revision. 
I' It has not been proved either that the rebellion 
/ was inspired by German agents, or that it was an 
j organized attempt to regain independence. If it 
had been the former, the trials of the ringleaders 
would certainly have brou^ght out the fact. If it had 
been the latter, much more enthusiasm for the cause 
could have been aroused in South Africa by a plain 
statement when the first commandos took the field. 
It was not well enough and wisely enough organized 
a movement to be considered separatist in character. 
More than this, it is exceedingly doubtful that men 
like De Wet and Kemp and Beyers — or any other 
important Boer, in fact — were interested, or would 
risk anything, for a movement to regain independ- 
ence. Influential Boers did not want a restoration 
of the old order. They knew that any movement for 
independence would be prejudicial to their own in- 
terests as well as to those of the Boer nation. Had 
the movement been organized by German agents or 
by plotters against the British Crown, it certainly 
would have been postponed until a more favorable 
momient. 

The prevalent view in South Africa is that the 
leaders drew blindly ignorant followers after them 
in the hope that their movement would lead to the 
downfall of the Botha-Smuts regime, and the coming 
to power of a real Afrikander Cabinet. They counted 
on Botha and Smuts not getting enough Boer support 
to oppose them. After they had actually taken arms, 
they would have been willing to stop the movement 

462 



THE REBELLION IN SOUTH AFRICA 

without a single shot being fired if Botha and Smuts 
had signified their intention to resign, and go before 
the country in a general election. 

To a certain extent, this interpretation is true. 
But English writers have not been willing to come 
out squarely with a statement of the issue the Hert- 
zog-Steyn party wanted referred to the country. 
The rebels were the extremists and hotheads of the 
opposition to Botha and Smuts. The issue was this : 
no aggressive campaign should be undertaken against 
German Southwest Africa, especially by an army 
drafted into service, without consulting the. country. 
The proposal of the Imperial Government that South 
Africa undertake the conquest of the neighboring 
German colony with Commonwealth forces, accepted 
by General Botha, was the one and sole cause of the 
rebellion. General Botha knew that the Boers did 
not want to fight. He decided to draft an army. A 
portion of the Boers resisted. They called it "an 
armed protest" and not "a rebellion." 

As we have seen elsewhere, ever since the forma- 
tion of the Commonwealth, the unadulterated Afri- 
kanders, while accepting the British "yoke," stood 
squarely against the Imperialists in maintaining that 
their ideal was a South African Commonwealth, 
united with the British Empire only as a matter of 
convenience. They were willing to Hve in harmony 
with their fellow-citizens of British origin in the 
development of a Commonwealth, and to give al- 
legiance to the British Crown, so long as the British 
did not attempt to use South Africa for serving 
general British interests. The Imperialists, on the 

463 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

other hand, maintained that South Africa was now 
an integral part of the British Empire, and that all 
should be loyal to the "mother country." But 
England was not the mother country of the Boers ! 

The outbreak of the European War brought the 
test. Was South Africa also at war with Germany? 
Did allegiance mean the necessity of the Boers taking 
up arms to attack a nation against whom they had 
no grievance and with whom they were united by 
traditional ties of blood and sympathy? Only if the 
Germans invaded South Africa, and not before that 
time, ought they to be called upon to fight. What 
interest had they in the quarrel between England 
and Germany? What advantage would come to 
them from shedding their blood to conquer the Ger- 
man colony ? The fate of German Southwest Africa 
did not interest them, and anyway it would be de- 
cided upon the battlefields of Europe, and not by 
anything they might do or by any sacrifice they 
might make. This was the opinion of a great major- 
ity of the Boers. Had it not been the opinion of a 
great majority, the Government would not have been 
afraid to put the issue before the country in a 
general election. 

Immediately after the rebellion was put down, the 
question arose as to the punishment to be meted out 
to the rebels. On November ii, 1914, General 
Botha stated that all who surrendered voluntarily 
before November 21st would not be criminally pro- 
secuted at the instance of the Government, except 
those who had taken a leading part in the rebellion 
or who had committed acts in violation of the rules 

464 



THE REBELLION IN SOUTH AFRICA 

of civilized warfare. On December loth, the Prime 
Minister declared: 

"Let us remember that this has been a quarrel 
in our own South African household, that all of 
us will have to continue to live together in that 
household in the future, and while we do our 
duty in seeing that never again shall there be a 
recurrence of this criminal folly, let us be on our 
guard against all vengeful policies and language, and 
cultivate a spirit of tolerance, forbearance, and 
merciful oblivion of the errors and misdeeds of those 
misguided people, many of whom took up arms 
without any criminal intention. While just and fair 
punishment should be meted out, let us also re- 
member that now, more than ever, it is for the people 
of South Africa to practice the wise policy of forgive 
and forget." 

On December 20th, he reiterated his plea to the 
British element to try to understand how the Boers 
must feel. 

"For the loyalist Boers," he said, "it has been 
an unhappy, indeed a tragic ordeal, to have to 
hunt down and fire upon men — some of them 
their relatives, many of them their friends — who 
were once their comrades in arms. The Dutch 
loyalists regard the whole rebellion as a lamentable 
business, upon which the curtain should be ri;ng 
down with as little declamation, as little controversy, 
as little recrimination as possible. The loyal com- 
mandos have had a hard task to perform. They 
have performed it. The cause of law and order has 
been, and will be, vindicated. Let that be enough. 
This is no time for exultation. Let us spare one 
30 465 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

another's feelings! Remember, we have to live 
together in this land long after the war is ended!" 

It would have been well if General Botha's wise 
words had been heeded. But racial animosity was 
strong — stronger than it had ever been since the 
days of the Boer War. South Africans of British 
extraction, unable to put themselves in the other 
man's place, clamored for drastic punishment. They 
declared that the loyalist Boers had done only their 
duty, and that the rebels must be tried and executed. 
They insinuated that the loyalist Boers had, during 
the course of the campaign, carried their feeling for 
the rebels so far, that they tried to do as little killing 
as possible, with the result that the lives of many 
British loyalists, fighting for the flag, were needlessly 
sacrificed. 

The rebels who had been Government officials or 
who held positions in the National Defense forces 
were tried by court martial and dealt with according 
to the law. One of the signers of the proclamation, 
Fourie, was executed on December 21st. The 
punishment of the others was left to Parliament, 
which met on February 26, 19 15. For the leaders 
it was decided that, after being tried for high treason 
before a competent court, and found guilty, imprison- 
ment with or without hard labor for life, or for a term 
of years, or a fine not exceeding £5000 might be 
imposed. The rank and file of those who had not 
taken advantage of the amnesty offer of November 
2 1st were dealt with by a general clause imposing 
certain civil disqualifications for a period of ten years. 

466 



THE REBELLION IN SOUTH AFRICA 

But they were not disenfranchised. General Botha 
was extemely anxious not to lay himself open to the 
charge made so tellingly against Dr. Jameson in Cape 
Colony after the Boer War, that he used the punish- 
ment of disenfranchisement to reduce the electoral 
power of his opponents. 

The curtain would have been rung down very 
quietly on the rebellion, and its aftermath, from an 
internal point of view, might not have increased the 
racial antagonism already existing, had it not been 
for the outcry raised in Parliament and in the loyalist 
press throughout the Union against these very wise 
measures. General Botha found himself denounced 
by the English loyalists for having been afraid to 
fulfil his duty in punishing the rebels; while his Boer 
opponents continued to declare that he had sold 
himself to the English by acknowledging that there 
had been a rebellion at all! 

From the standpoint of immediate Imperial policy, 
the cooperation of South Africa in the conquest of 
German Southwest Africa and German East Africa 
was a great success. Had the rebellion not occurred, 
the expedition to Southwest Africa, composed as it 
originally was almost wholly of soldiers of British 
extraction (for General Botha at the very beginning 
of the rebellion found himself compelled to withdraw 
the obligation to serve, knowing that it could not be 
enforced), would have been a long-drawn-out affair, 
if not a failure. As it was, the loyalist Boer com- 
mandos, who put down the rebellion, furnished a 
splendid army for Southwest Africa, and have been 
since a factor in the conquest of East Africa. Accord- 

467 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

ing to the Round Table, nearly seventy thousand 
men were under arms against the rebels and in the 
Southwest African campaign. Twent^^-four thou- 
sand are in British East Africa in the autumn of 191 6. 
Seven thousand five hundred joined Kitchener's 
army at their own expense, and eleven thousand are 
serving in France and Egypt and Macedonia with 
the overseas contingents. The proportion of Boers 
in the British army to-day is naturally not nearly as 
great as that of volunteers of British extraction. 
But it means a lot to the British Empire that young 
Boers are serving voluntarily in her army. 
j From the ulterior standpoint, one may have at this 
time misgivings about the wisdom of using South 
African troops for the conquest of the German 
colonies. Conquered as they have been by South 
African blood. Great Britain is not free to use them 
as pawns for bargaining in the Peace Conference. 
This may cause considerable embarrassment at the 
end of the war. Sufficient to the day, however, is the 
evil thereof. 

In South Africa, since the rebellion, there have 
been disquieting events to prove that anti-British 
feeling is still strong. In the general election of 
October 20, 191 5, General Botha's strong majority 
dwindled to half. The radical Boers, who call 
themselves the Nationalist Party, won twenty-seven 
seats. General Botha has a majority now only with 
Unionist (British loyaHst) support. When the 
Enemy Trading Bill came before Parliament, Gen- 
eral Hertzog stated bluntly that his part German 
ancestry did not permit him to view Germany as an 

468 



THE REBELLION IN SOUTH AFRICA 

Englishman would. The Nationalists, and some of 
General Botha's followers as well, fought this bill 
tooth and nail. They fought equally a bill to raise 
the pay of volunteers fighting overseas to the amount 
given by Canada and Australia, although this had 
been insisted upon by the entire English-speaking 
section of the electorate at the polls, and was sup- 
ported by the labor members. General Botha's own 
party was so much in sympathy with the Nationalists 
on the question of refusing to burden the South 
African taxpayer more than was absolutely essential 
to pay the men who were fighting Britain's battle, 
that General Botha could not press the matter. He 
declared to the Unionists, when they tried to get his 
support for the measure, ''You have no right to 
press us. I assure you, we are standing on the brink 
of a volcano, and you know it. " 

When Lord Kitchener's tragic end was reported, 
there was much satisfaction in the Transvaal. In 
the Orange Free State, some towns held public 
celebrations. 

Racial strife and antipathy will not cease in South 
Africa as long as one element in the population de- 
sires to have the relation of the Commonwealth to 
Great Britain that of a colony to the mother country. 
This will never be. But it is possible for Boer and 
Briton to live in harmony side by side and to fuse 
eventually into one race — a race markedly Anglo- 
Saxon — if Great Britain is content to have her flag 
wave there as a symbol rather than as a reality. 



469 



CHAPTER XXIV 
THE CONQUEST OF THE GERMAN COLONIES 



rr-i 



\ •' I ^HE successive declarations of war during the 
first few days of August, 1914, left the four 
German colonies in Africa, and the Germans 
in other parts of Africa, in a hopeless situation. The 
mastery of the sea was assured to the enemies of 
Germany when Great Britain decided to join them. 
There was no help, then, from the outside. Togo- 
land and Kamerun were completely surrounded by 
colonies of the Allies. In Southwest Africa Germany 
had Portugal on the north, and in East Africa on the 
south. On the other frontiers were the enemy. 
From the very beginning, Portugal, the ally and de- 
pendent of Great Britain, was a constant threat to 
these two colonies. There were many thousands of 
German subjects living outside of German territory 
in other African colonies. They had refuge only for 
a year in Italian colonies. There was nowhere else 
in Africa where they were unmolested, except in 
Abyssinia and Liberia, and the wee colonies of Spain. 
But even in Spanish Morocco and internationalized 
Tangier the Germans were not safe. 

In the new French Protectorate of Morocco, at the 
very beginning of the war, conspiracies of German 

470 



CONQUEST OF THE GERMAN COLONIES 

consuls and merchants were discovered. Those who 
could get away fled into the Riff and to Spain. The 
rest were interned. Some, against whom complicity 
in plots could be proved, were tried before French 
courts-martial and shot. In Tripoli, German con- 
sular officials and others whom the Italian authorities 
claimed were military officers in disguise were found 
to be in relations with Arab "rebels." Some were 
imprisoned, and others expelled. There was no v 
immunity for Germans in French and British and Bel- / 
gian colonies. In some parts they were treated with ^ 
leniency at first. But the news of German successes i 
and German excesses in Europe, coupled with the 
desire to put out of the way commercial rivals, led ' 
to imprisonment in concentration camps and forcible / 
liquidation and sequestration of business interests j 
everywhere. 

There were very many old established German 
residents in the South African Commonwealth, and 
some in Rhodesia. Among them were men who had 
contributed in a most important way to the develop- 
ment of South Africa, In fact, the older German 
firms had been the invaluable coadjutors of Cecil 
Rhodes in the last two decades of the nineteenth 
century. The Boers were very friendly to the Ger- 
mans, and even after the rebellion and the South- 
west Africa campaign public sentiment would not 
allow bona fide German residents of the Common- 
wealth to be molested. The sinking of the Lusitania, 
however, led to disgraceful riots in Johannesburg and 
elsewhere. Germans were maltreated, and their 
homes and business places looted and destroyed. 

471 



THE NEW MAP OP AFRICA 

The British element in the Commonwealth agitated 
in Parliament, after the passage of an Enemy Trading 
Bill, for the internment of all Germans and the se- 
questration of their properties. Only the return of 
a Parliament in the general election of 191 6 in which 
General Botha's moderate Boers were caught without 
a majority between British and Boer fanatics has 
saved the Germans from experiencing a fate similar 
to that of those in British Crown Colonies. 

I The Germans of Egypt were not more immune, 
owing to the peculiar status of the country, than were 

/ the Germans of Morocco. They were interned in con- 
centration camps. Their extensive business interests 

/ were put into the hands of receivers appointed by the 
British authorities, and forcibly liquidated. 

From the very first day of the war, Germany had 
no hopes for Togoland, whose geographical position 
put the colony at the mercy of France and Britain. 
There were less than two hundred Germans in the 
colony, who had military training, and they could 
muster only a thousand natives. The British sent a 
force from the Gold Coast to occupy Lome on August 
6, 1914. At the same moment, a French army 
invaded Togoland from Dahomey. The Germans 
offered to capitulate, if given honors of war. Un- 
conditional surrender was demanded. The Germans 
retired into the interior to Kamina, where the most 
powerful wireless station in Africa, which could com- 
municate with Berlin, had just been completed. On 
August 22 d, the Germans attacked the combined 
French and British forces between Atakpame and 
the coast. Beaten back, they destroyed the wireless 

472 



CONQUEST OF THE GERMAN COLONIES 

station, and surrendered on August 28th. The con- 
quest of Togoland was completed in the first month 
of the war. 

In the other three colonies, the Germans expected ^ 
to be able, not only to resist successfully, but to make 
things hot for their enemies throughout Africa. In ' 
Southwest Africa they relied upon a Boer rebellion. 
In Kamerun, they expected to arouse the adjacent / 
French Sudan and Northern Nigeria against France 
and Great Britain. In East Africa, they expected ^ 
aid from Arabia, Egypt, and the Sudan. But the 
disloyalty of the Boers in South Africa, as we have 
seen in the last chapter, did not materialize into a 
serious danger for the Commonwealth. And the ) 
Germans were all wrong in their calculation of the 
effect the alliance with Turkey and the proclamation / 
of the Holy War would have upon Islam in North 
and Central Africa. Not for a moment was French , 
or British authority seriously menaced in any 
African colony. One might put the statement a , 
little more strongly. Far from being embarrassed by 
holding Moslem colonies and protectorates in Africa, 
France and Great Britain have found in these pos- 
sessions a source of strength and great aid in prosecut- 
ing the war. African Moslems have constituted a ^ 
very precious element in the French armies in Europe. 

Giving tit for tat and a little more, Great Britain ' 
has turned the tables on the Turks and Germans who 
counted her possession of Egypt a military weakness, 
and has used Egypt to wean away the Shereef of ' 
Mecca from his allegiance to Turkey. 

What fighting France and Italy have had to do in 
473 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Morocco and Tripoli was in no sense a repercussion 
of the European War, but the continuation of mili- 
tary operations of the ante-bellum period. In all 
I Africa, only the Sultan of Darfur responded to the 
^ Khalif 's call to the Holy War. He waited nearly two 
1 years, and when he was getting ready to make trouble 
r in the Sudan, he was quickly suppressed by a small 
' expeditionary corps from Kliartum. ^ The only 
other fighting in Africa, outside of that involved in 
the conquest of the German colonies, was on the 
western and eastern frontiers of Egypt. On the 
west, the Senussi, who had been carrying on 4, very 
successful campaigns against the Italians in the 
Tripolitaine, attacked the British at the end of 191 5. 
They occupied Solium, and advanced at several 
points towards the Nile valley from the Libyan 
Desert. But they were very soon driven out of 
Egyptian territory, and suffered heavily. In the 
east, the Turks advanced across the Isthmus of Suez, 
1 and attacked the Canal in March, 191 5. The at- 
' tempt was unsuccessful. In 191 6, the British kept a 
I large army on the Canal, which they had fortified 
I very carefully.^ At the time of this writing, the 



^ See above, pp. 19 (note) and 341. 

* I had the privilege of visiting the British army on the Suez Canal 
in January and February, 1916. In the latter month, the system of 
defenses had been worked out sufficiently for the visitor to get a good 
idea of the plan and a firm conviction that the Germano-Turks would 
never attack successfully the Canal. The General Staff detailed an 
officer to show me the first lines to the east of the Canal, and allowed 
me to see the maps they had made of the Isthmus. Whatever fault 
there had been in 191 5, it is sure that a year later the British were 
in a position not to be caught napping again. 

474 



CONQUEST OF THE GERMAN COLONIES 

British forces have cleared the Turks out of the 
Isthmus, and are waiting only for the progress of the 
Arab rebellion against Turkey to cooperate with 
the Shereef of Mecca in the occupation of Palestine. 

German Southwest Africa was quite unprepared 
to repel an invasion. The Germans had no army in 
the colony. Since the Herero War, peace had reigned 
and the Germans had devoted themselves to eco- 
nomic development. In spite of absurd stories that 
have been written to the contrary, the armed forces 
of the colony were only large enough to do police 
duty, and their supply of arms and ammunition did 
not enable them to offer serious resistance to the 
overwhelming forces General Botha was able to 
bring against them. The situation had possibilities 
for the Germans, only if the Boer rebellion had been 
successful, or if all the Boers had refused to bear arms 
against them. : 'The Southwest African campaign 
demonstrated beyond the possibility of doubt either 
that Germany was not expecting a war with Great 
Britain, or that, in case of war, there was no intention 
to stir up the Boers. This statement may be con- 
tested. But it is difficult to see how a General Staff 
such as the German one has proved itself to be would 
not have been organizing and preparing thoroughly 
for years in Southwest Africa, if Southwest Africa 
had been in the plan of future military operations. 

The operations of General Botha are uninteresting : 
for when an army of fifty thousand, well equipped 
for every possible need, goes after an army of five 
thousand in a country where supplies are lacking and 
munitions once used cannot be renewed, what is there 

475 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

to write about? The Commonwealth forces were 
not very well handled, for they allowed the Germans 
to escape time after time. When the capital, Wind- 
huk, was occupied on May 1 2th, after the Common- 
wealth forces had been four months in the field, the 
Germans retired to the north. When they were 
followed to Grootfontein, and there was nothing to 
retire to except bush, and no food to be found along 
the only line of retreat, the Germans, to the number 
of thirty-five hundred, surrendered on July 9, 1915. 
The Germans, against overwhelming odds, main- 
tained their force practically complete. One does 
not know whether to credit German skill or to dis- 
credit the skill of General Sir Duncan Mackenzie, 
who seemed totally unable to get any good out of all 
the advantages he possessed. 
. In Kamerun and East Africa, while the odds in the 
way of supplies were equally great against the Ger- 

/ mans, they were not overwhelmed by a huge army 
as in Southwest Africa. So they were able to get the 

/ best out of skill and resourcefulness, courage and 
endurance. The bitterest enemy of the Germans 
must acknowledge that their defense in Kamerun 

I and East Africa stamps the officers who conducted 
the troops in these two colonies as the very best sort 
of sportsmen. In Kamerun the Germans held out 
for a year and a half, and then succeeded in avoiding 
capture. In East Africa, after more than two years 

' of being cut off from the outside world, they are 
still in the field, with a navy and four armies against 
them. 

As there were not many German troops in Kam- 
476 



CONQUEST OF THE GERMAN COLONIES . 

erun, and the British in Nigeria beHeved they would 
be received by the Kamerun natives as Hberators, 
they counted on a six weeks' campaign to destroy or 
capture the German forces in Kamerun. On August 
25, 1 9 14, a Nigerian force crossed the frontier. In 
the following week two other British columns in- 
vaded Kamerun. The Germans brought up their 
mobile native troops with lightning rapidity, and 
drove back into Nigerian territory the invaders. On 
the coast, owing to the protection of warships, French 
and British troops were able to effect landings at the 
ports. At the mouth of the Kamerun River, Duala, 
the capital, was occupied, and forty thousand tons of 
German shipping captured. The war continued 
throughout the whole year of 191 5, all three of the 
belligerents employing black troops. When the 
Allies were able to bring up their heavy guns against 
a fortified post, the Germans had no chance whatever. 
But they held out each time until the Allies had ex- 
pended an enormous amount of invaluable ammuni- 
tion, and destroyed the buildings and supplies that 
could not be moved. Never once were their ene- 
mies able to surround them. Their three thousand 
black soldiers, led by two hundred and fifty white 
officers, completely baffled the efforts of Major-Gen- 
eral Dobell's eight thousand British, French, and 
Belgian soldiers. When their ammunition gave out, 
they had so manoeuvered their retreat as to be able 
to cross to safety into Rio Muni, the little Spanish 
enclave in Kamerun. 

Admirable as the Kamerun campaign was, from 
the German point of view, it was rivalled by that in 

477 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

East Africa. The Wangoni rebellion, in 1906, had 
taught the Germans in East Africa what the British 
and French had long known, the value of recruiting 
and training native soldiers. The mistake of the 
Herero rebellion in Southwest Africa was not re- 
peated. White troops were recalled, and some 
natives from German New Guinea introduced to in- 
corporate with East African levies. During the eight 
years between 1906 and 1 9 14, the Germans in East 
Africa paid great attention to native troops, and 
built up a splendid army. When war was declared 
in 1 914, they did not wait to be invaded. They 
crossed into the Belgian Congo, attacked posts in 
Rhodesia, and threatened the British East African 
frontier. On the lakes, there was naval warfare. 
Until the Home Governments of their enemies were 
able to give serious attention to the problem of the 
conquest of East Africa, the Germans were fairly 
evenly matched with their neighbors. For there 
were not many troops in British East Africa and 
Uganda, and practically none in Rhodesia and 
Nyasaland, save what were absolutely essential for 
police purposes. There were twenty thousand black 
troops in the Belgian Congo. But the Belgian 
authorities felt they had their hands full in looking 
after their own territories, and were content to re- 
main on the defensive. 

At the beginning of 1915, three companies of 
British Indian infantry, who were holding the post of 
Jasin in German territory, were surrounded by Ger- 
man black troops, who forced them to surrender, 
after an attempt at relief had failed. It was, on a 

478 



CONQUEST OF THE GERMAN COLONIES 

very small scale of course, a prelude to Kut-el-Amara. 
The Indians were sacrificed to the rashness of their 
British officers, who were betrayed by overconfidence 
and disdain of the enemy into an unjustified forward 
movement that ended in humiliation. At the end of 
1 91 5, the Germans were in possession of the whole of 
the East Africa colony, coast line and boundaries as 
well as interior. It was decided to call upon the 
South Africans to conquer the colony, and General 
Smith Dorrien was appointed to command the 
invasion. Early in 19 16, the British General re- 
signed his command "for reasons of health" — the 
polite and invariable formula — and was succeeded 
by General Botha. Germany's declaration of war 
upon Portugal brought another enemy into the 
field. , 

The reports from East Africa during the spring and 
summer of 191 6 were very vague. But each official 
bulletin brought the news of a new success for the ' 
combined South African, Rhodesian, Portuguese, 
Belgian, Indian, and British armies. On September , 
4th, Dar-es-Salaam was captured, and on the i8th, ' 
the two last footholds of the Germans on the coast ^^ 
fell into the hands of the British. The whole line of 
railway across the colony was occupied before the 
end of September. It is probable that when this 
book goes to press, the conquest of the last German 
colony in Africa will have been completed. As 
there is no neutral territory to which they can retire, 
the Germans will be compelled to surrender. 

The story of the Great War in Africa has demon- 
strated two things, one of which was not expected by 

479 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

the Germans, and the other of which was not expected 
by their enemies. 

J The collapse of their hopes of Islamic uprisings, or 
rather a coordinated Islamic movement in North 

/ and Central Africa, is a severe blow to Germany and 
her allies. By the same token, it is a remarkable 
testimony to the hold France and Great Britain 
have over the natives under their flags. 

I The ability of German officers in Kamerun and 
East Africa to command the loyalty of their native 

* troops and the cooperation of the inhabitants of 
these two colonies is a big surprise to France and 

' Great Britain, and disproves the thesis that the na- 
tives of the portions of Africa over which Germany 

'' ruled were eager to welcome British and French 

/ liberators. 

In conclusion, by the test of this cataclysm, which 
has brought half of Europe against the other half, 
one can affirm the stability of European institutions 
in Africa, and the lack of desire or power of the in- 
habitants of any part of Africa to change the political 
status under which they have been brought during 
the last two decades. 



480 



CHAPTER XXV 

AFRICAN PROBLEMS FOR THE PEACE 
CONFERENCE 

IF one maintains that the attitude of tHe Powers 
towards the problems that come before the 
Peace Conference depends upon the military 
position of the two groups of belligerents at the time 
the armistice is signed, he can see no use in discuss- 
ing peace problems. For there will be no peace 
problems. The victors will refuse to consider 
problems. They will impose conditions on the time- 
honored basis of '' Vce victisl" It will be a peace 
in which superior force is the decisive factor, not 
only the combined superior force of one group of 
belligerents over the other, but the comparative 
superior force of the states in the victorious group. 
If peace is made on this basis, the war will have been 
fought in vain. 

Europe will remain an armed camp. The victors I 
will need standing armies to maintain their terms. ' 
The vanquished will hope to reverse the decision 
of force by building up bigger armies than they ever ' 
had before and by diplomatic intrigue. France did | 
this after 1815 and 1870, Russia after 1854 and ( 
31 481 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

\1878, and Austria-Hungary after 1859 and 1866. 
Great Britain all the while was guided by the sole 

j consideration of throwing in her sword to prevent 

, any continental Power from becoming strong enough 

, to menace her world supremacy. 

But in this war, from the very beginning, France 
and Great Britain have made the issue a moral one. 
They appeal to the whole world for sympathy and 
for support on the ground that they took up the sword 
for the sake of humanity. Premier Viviani, in the 
Chamber of Deputies, and Prime Minister Asquith, 
in the House of Commons, solemnly declared in 
the name of France and Great Britain that these 
two Powers were not fighting for territorial aggran- 
dizement, but for the principles of international 
law and the freedom of small nations. Germany, 
on the other hand, was convicted before the court 
of world opinion of being the aggressor and actually 
starting the war, and of attacking Belgium wholly 
without provocation, although she had assumed the 
international obligation to maintain Belgian neutral- 
ity. Russia's recent record was worse than that 
of Germany, and her cruelties in the initial cam- 
paigns fully as shocking. Neutral public opinion 
throughout the whole world, however, sustained 
unhesitatingly the cause of the Entente Allies. 
There was deep sympathy with the wrongs inflicted 
upon little Belgium and little Serbia. There was 
disgust of German methods of beginning and con- 
ducting the war. But most of all, neutral public 
opinion rallied to the Entente Allies because of 
belief in the sincerity of the appeals made for its 

482 



UNSETTLED AFRICAN PROBLEMS 

sympathy on the ground of fighting the battle of 
humanity. 

The small neutrals in Europe are at the mercy 
of the combatants. Whatever they may think, 
the expression of their thoughts is muzzled by geo- 
graphical and economic conditions. Even if they 
were free to translate thought into action, the force 
they could muster would not count for much on sea 
or on land. The South American states are de- 
pendent upon foreign capital, foreign products, 
foreign markets, and foreign steamship lines. They 
must acquiesce in the general international decisions 
of the United States and Europe. The three large 
South American coimtries, Brazil, Chile, and Argen- 
tina, have combined only about ten per cent, of the 
population of European origin that the United 
States possesses. In wealth and resources as well 
as , in population, the important neutral is the 
United States. By institutions and by blood, it is 
natural that the overwhelming majority of Ameri- 
cans should sympathize with France and Great 
Britain. 

But one cannot insist too strongly upon the point 
that the people of the United States do not hate — ■ 
do not even dislike — the people of Germany. What 
they do hate is the picture of Germany that has been 
held up before them during the war — a nation, gone 
mad by lust for power and blood and destruction, 
blindly upholding a ruler and statesmen who have 
upset the peace of the world, trampled upon small 
nations, and violated the principles of humanity in 
order to dominate the world. In sharp relief to 

483 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

this picture is that of the Entente Allies, nobly 
struggUng to save the world from Prussian militar- 
ism, sacrificing themselves to defend humanity, 
and pledged to a peace that will establish the world 
upon a new basis of justice and freedom for all 
mankind. 

As long as the pictures remain as they are, the 
Entente Allies are assured of American sympathy. 
If they are the victors, and go to the Peace Confer- 
ence to fulfil the pledges of their statesmen, with 
the intention of establishing peace on a durable 
basis, they will have American cooperation and 
American support. As this cooperation and sup- 
port will be a precious asset, it is the duty of Ameri- 
can writers, who have loyally supported from the 
very beginning the cause of the Allies, to present 
and to discuss problems of the future Peace Confer- 
ence in a spirit of frankness. 

In international relations, the African settlement 
is going to be as important and as significant for the 
future as have been the African developments. 
The history of Africa in the last generation, and 
especially in the decade immediately preceding the 
war, shows the vital part of European rivalry in 
Africa in forming the alliances and in stirring up 
the friction that made a European War inevitable. 
Unless the African settlement is made upon a basis 
of broad statesmanship, the peace treaty will con- 
tain embers of a fire unquenched, ready to break 
out again when fresh fuel is thrown upon it. 

The great question is this: Will Germany be ex- 
cluded from Africa, or will she be readmitted to 

484 



UNSETTLED AFRICAN PROBLEMS 

cooperate in the development of the continent on a 
basis that will give satisfaction to the abilities and 
necessities and aspirations of the German people? 

The partisan, in the heat of the conflict, opens his 
eyes in amazement and indignation at this question. 
He denounces you as a pro-German. If you con- 
vince him that you are sincere in your friendship, 
he asks how you can be so naive as to expect the 
AUies to return to Germany what they have taken 
from her. "We have Germany at our mercy. She 
is beaten. She and aU her partners must pay the 
price of their crime against civilization.' Do you 
not believe in punishment?" 

This reasoning is precisely that of Germany in 
1870. Germany declared to the world that she 
was not fighting the French, but was mercifully 
ridding them of their War Lord, who was trying to 
lead France along the path followed by the first 
Napoleon. But the lust of pillage and conquest 
caught the Germans with the first victories. The 
resistance of France maddened them. They told 
the neutral world they could not afford to be kept 
in continual jeopardy by the militarist ambitions of 
France. They must annex territory (which had 
once been German) to protect themselves against 
French aggression. The memory was still aHve of 
the invasion of Germany by the first Napoleon, and 
they burned to wipe out the humiliation of Jena and 
Napoleon's entry to Berlin. They had to bring 
France to her knees and punish her. The punish- 
ment was a boomerang. Instead of securing the 
tranquillity of the next generation, the Treaty of 

485 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

Frankfort has brought disaster upon the children 
of those who imposed it upon France. 

Aside from the argument of punishment, the only- 
justification of France and Great Britain for re- 
taining the German colonies would be: economic ne- 
cessity of keeping the colonies; or the claim that 
Germany had forfeited her right to them, through 
barbarous treatment of the natives or incapacity to 
administer and develop the colonies. A survey of 
the distribution of African territory, and the history 
of the last decade of European colonization in Africa, 
are sufficient to make invalid both these grounds.^ 
Even were there reasonable doubt here, is not the 
heavy loss of men and money during the present 
war going to retard the administrative and economic 
development of the colonies France and Great 
Britain already possess? Is it wise to assume new 
obligations? 

If the Entente Allies have in mind the destruction 
of Prussian militarism, this can be best accomplished 
by giving Germany a large part in the development 
of Africa. The student of German politics during 



^ The reports of British consuls in the German colonies, and of 
governors and other officials of adjacent British colonies, from 
1906 to 1 9 13, are high in their praise of German efficiency and Ger- 
man courtesy, and of the fact that British trade and traders received 
fair treatment. Commerce was far easier and more profitable for 
British in German than in French and Portuguese colonies. Several 
officers of the British army, speaking since the present war began, 
have assured me that in boundary commissions and other common 
tasks, they got along better with the German officers than with 
those of any other nation in Africa. "They are really more our 
sort, you know," was the candid confession. 

486 



UNSETTLED AFRICAN PROBLEMS 

the past fifteen years is convinced that sufficient 
popular support for army and navy credits was 
gained by the German Weltpolitik advocates only 
because they were able to convince the electorate 
of the necessity of colonies, both for excess popula- 
tion and for markets, and that the rivals of Germany 
were doing all in their power to grab what was left 
of the world and to prevent Germany from getting 
her "place in the sun." The population and re- 
sources of Germany increased marvelously since the 
accession of the present Kaiser. The advocacy of 
a policy of estabHshing overseas dominions, where 
great markets for exports could be developed, raw 
materials grown, emigrants saved to Deutschtum, 
and German KuUur and language spread, was re- 
sisted for many years by the German electorate. 
But in recent years imperialism, fostered by these i 
arguments, has become no less attractive to the i 
Germans than to the French and British. ^ National 
instinct is the same the world over. 

^ Englishmen think exactly as Germans do. In a visit to New 
Zealand in 19 16, Sir Rider Haggard declared: "We are anxious to 
see that the men who leave Great Britain . . . remain somewhere 
within the shadow of the British flag, and do not settle in the United 
States or Argentine or some other foreign country . . . the Empire 
cannot afford to lose these people. . . . No expense is too great 
and no thought too high to give to the problem of how to retain 
within the Empire our own citizens." Commenting on this state- 
ment the Auckland Star said: "The material progress and strength 
necessary for safety depend upon man-power, and the Empire 
must see that that power is conserved by every possible means. 
Emigration to places beyond the Empire must be vigorously dis- 
couraged. . . . The point to be emphasized now is that men and 
women desirous of a change must be kept within the Empire." 
The Round Table for September, 19 16, remarks that Sir Rider 

487 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

The Germans bubbled over. Perhaps they ought 
not to have done so. But could they have helped 
it ? Where did they have a good chance to expend 
the newly-created excess of national energy and 
national pride and national creative longing ? When 
a bottle is overflowing, and you try to keep in the 
cork, the bottle breaks, and the hand that pressed 
down the cork gets hit by flying pieces of glass. A 
repetition of the act is folly. Here is the kernel of 
the European problem. 

After an unsuccessful war, if their eyes are opened 
to the unwelcome truth that they have been deluded 
by their leaders into fighting a policy of encircle- 
ment that had no truth in it, the German people 
will themselves make short work of the Kaiserism, 
JunkerivSm, and Prussian militarism we abhor. But 
I ' if their colonies are taken from them, and they are 
shut off from trading with Africa and Asia and Aus- 
tralasia, they will find in the peace terms of their 
} enemies ample justification for having fought the war, 
( and will give their Kaiser and his statesmen and 
( generals credit for having done their best to avert the 
j conspiracy whose existence will have been proved 
. in their eyes by the fact of its success. Instead of 
being chastened and repentant, they will be defiant. 
Instead of mourning the useless sacrifice of fathers 
, and sons, of husbands and brothers, the dead will be 
I martyrs of a sacred cause, whose memory will keep 
alive the determination to devote energies and brains, 

Haggard's appeal is curiously like those made by Froude in 1870 
in his articles on England and her colonies in volume ii. of SJiort 
Studies on Great Subjects. 

488 



UNSETTLED AFRICAN PROBLEMS 

and to consecrate the new generation, to the build- \ 
ing up of a new war machine. The enemies of ^ 
Germany could not prevent this. You can knock ^ 
a man down. But if you want to keep him down, 
you must sit on him, and keep sitting on him. He 
who imposes his will upon another by force generally 
becomes the victim of his victory. 

There is another extremely important considera- 
tion that should convince statesmen of the wisdom 
of welcoming Germany to a more important part 
than she has yet had in the development of European 
civilization in Africa. There are ninety million / 
Germans in Central Europe. If they are barred | 
from overseas development, they will own Poland in \ 
spite of the efforts of the Poles and Russians, and ' 
they will be masters of the Balkan Peninsula and | 
Asia Minor. Many Germans have been opposed ' 
to the colonies, and are glad now that their country 
has been put out of Africa, for the very reason that 
all the energies and resources of Germany might be 
redirected to the Drang nach Osten. The only way ( 
to prevent Germany from remaining, even after a -, 
crushing defeat, the greatest military and political ; 
factor in Europe is to give her an outlet — an ample > 
outlet — in Africa. The policy of trying at every ' 
turn to forestall the hesitating development of 
German colonial enterprise was highly successful 
in Africa and elsewhere. It gave to Great Britain 
and France larger colonial empires and commercial 
and political advantages, of which the Occidental 
Powers have made excellent use. It obstructed 
German "intrigues" in Asiatic Turkey and Persia. 

489 



THE NEW MAP OF AFRICA 

It prevented Germany from establishing coaling- 
stations and naval ports. But it is exacting now 
a fearful toll of French and British lives. Were the 
gains worth the price that is being paid? One 
doubts seriously whether they were gains — or even 
diplomatic advantages. A river, deflected from one 
j channel, finds another. If it does not, it bursts over 
I the dam, and gets back into the old channel. It does 
not stop running. The natural economic laws at 

iwork in the world cannot be set aside by diplomatic 
combinations. You cannot get rid of a fact by re- 
fusing to see it. From the physical as well as the 
intellectual standpoint the Germans are the most 
powerful ethnic group in Europe. They are un- 
rivaled in their energy, their discipline, and their 
commercial and scientific ability. In number, they 
equal, if they do not surpass, the Russians. Their 
geographical position is the strongest of the European 
races. Damn them if you will; but there they are. 

The United States is vitally interested in a wise 
and politic settlement of the European War. We 
have potent reasons, aside from resentment over 
the Belgian invasion, the nefarious activity of sub- 
marines, and the intrigues on American soil, to wish 
for the destruction of Prussian militarism and the 
return of the German people to the rest of the world's 
way of looking at things. We have no faith in 
Russia. Her attitude toward Poland and toward 
the Jews is as abominable as it was before the war. 
The only explanation of the failure of liberal public 
opinion in France and Great Britain to come out 
generously and impressively in favor of Poles and 

490 



UNSETTLED AFRICAN PROBLEMS 

Jews is that political blackmail — unofficial, perhaps, 
but none the less powerful — has kept London and 
Paris newspapers silent. The alliance of Russia 
and Japan fills us with the gravest misgivings about 
the future of China. The time is not far distant 
when duty and interest may impose upon us inter- 
vention in the Far East. An unbridgeable chasm | 
between the Occidental Powers and Germany will 
lead to an alliance of Germany with Russia and Japan i 
to dominate Asia. This is not prophecy. On your I " 
chessboard, you can point out moves and combina-/; 
tions of moves from study of and experience in otherl 
games. You cannot, of course, foresee what movei' 
the player will make. But you can tell him what \ 
will happen if he makes the move. 

The siu-est means of establishing the security of 
Europe against Prussian militarism is to take away 
from the reactionary elements in Germany the 
arguments by which they have won and hold the 
support of the German electorate. A regenerated, 
democratic Germany, cooperating with the rest of 
Europe and with America in the work of developing 
and civilizing the world, will be born out of this war, 
if internationalism, instead of nationalism, and the 
higher interests of humanity, instead of the particu- 
lar interests of the strongest, are the ruling factors 
of the Peace Conference. 

The happiness of our children, in a world where 
peace and harmony reign, depends much upon the 
new map of Africa. 



491 



INDEX 



Abbas Hilmi, Khedive of Egypt, 
399-400 ; character and oppor- 
tunities, 421, 423; deposed, 
424 

Abdul Aziz, Sultan of Morocco, 
362 et seq., 378 et seq.; agrees 
to abdicate, 383 

Abyssinia, 96-105; Italy and, 
97, 99; Emperor Menelik, 
97, 99, 102, 103; Dr. Rosen 
Kaiser's envoy to, 99-100; 
German and Austrian com- 
mercial treaties, 100; French 
and British convention, 
loo-ioi; death of Emperor 
Menelik, 103; civil war in, 
103; future of, 104 

Adowa, battle of, 1896, 4; 
defeat at crushing blow to 
Italian colonial aspirations 
in East Africa, 118 

Africa, European development 
of, possible only with increase 
of transportation facilities and 
production, 31; islands of, 
31-42; Boer war marks a step 
forward in making it a white 
man's country, 50-51; colo- 
nial adventures of Italy in, 
1 1 5-1 29; Spanish colonies in, 
115 n.; Germany's entrance 
into, 173-174; stability of 
European institutions in, 480 

African problems for the Peace 
Conference, 481-491 ; will Ger- 
many be excluded from Africa 
at end of European War?, 
484-486 ; considerations in 
favor of giving Germany a 
part in development of Africa, 
486-490; American interest in 
a wise settlement, 490-491 



Afrikander Congress at Wor- 
cester, December, 1900, 44 

Agadir incident, 388 

Albert, King of Belgium, visits 
Congo, 162 

Albert Nyanza, Lake, unavail- 
able for irrigating the Sudan, 
20 

Algeciras, European rivalry in 
Morocco before, 355-373; 
Conference of 1906, 373, 374, 
et seq. 

Algeria and Tunis, the nucleus 
of the French African Empire, 
130-146; French enter Algeria 
in 1830, 132; French occu- 
pation of Tunis sanctioned, 
133; Tunis and Morocco the 
keys to France's house in 
Africa, 134 and n.; Tunis 
invaded, 134; Algeria con- 
quered during reign of Louis 
Philippe, 135; French govern- 
ment of, 135 et seq.; Algeria 
did not prosper till inhabi- 
tants were given voice in 
government, 137-138; Alge- 
rian trade with France and 
commercial development, 138- 
139; education in Algeria, 
139-140; extension of Algerian 
territory, 141; Tunis invaded 
and French Protectorate es- 
tablished, 141; early economic 
progress of Tunis, 142; politi- 
cal advantages to French of 
holding Tunis, 143-144; crux 
of French problem in northern 
Africa, 144-146 

Ali, Sultan, of Darfur, 19 and n. 

Anglo-French agreement of 1899, 
18; of 1904, 18, 368, 369 



493 



INDEX 



Angola, or Portuguese West 

Africa, 257-263 
Ashanti, revolt of, 282-283 
Atbara, railway to, 11 
Atbara River, bridge over, 11 



Basutoland, 83 

Belgians in the Congo, 147-172; 
see also Congo 

Bernard, Colonel, Financial 
Secretary at Khartum, 9-10 

Beyers, General, 70; a leader in 
rebellion in South African 
Union, 454 et seq.; drowned, 
461 

Bismarck, telegram to German 
Consul at Cape Town, 174 

Boers, result of the Boer War 
a benefit to, 50-51; oppose 
introduction of Chinese labor 
in South Africa, 61-62; agi- 
tate for responsible govern- 
ment, 67-68; demand that 
Orange Free State be given 
responsible government at 
same time as Transvaal, 69; 
determined that franchise 
shall not be granted to 
natives and coolies, 72; con- 
flict over use of Taal in South 
African schools, 74-76 ; opposed 
to attacking German South- 
west Africa, 454; potential 
rebels, 456; form most ^of 
army of General Smuts which 
crushes rebellion in South 
African Union, 460; attitude 
of, towards Great Britain and 
in European War, 463-464; 
in conquest of German South- 
west and East Africa and in 
overseas contingents, 467- 
468; see also Boer War, Trans- 
vaal, South Africa, and Orange 
Free State. 

Boer War, last years of, 43-49; 
British disappointment at pro- 
longation of, 43; Afrikander 
Congress denounces British 
conduct of, 44; French public 
opinion hostile to Great Brit- 



ain, 44; Kaiser Wilhelm's 
refusal to receive President 
Kruger checkmates Boer 
hopes of aid from Europe, 44; 
martial law proclaimed in 
Cape Colony, 44; _ Lord 
Kitchener's proclamation of 
August 7, 1 90 1, 45; concentra- 
tion camps, 46-47 and n.; 
"National Scouts" in, 47-48; 
defeat of Lord Methuen the 
last Boer victory, 48; Boer 
independence out of the ques- 
tion, 48; Vereeniging Confer- 
ence, May 15, 1902, 48-49;' 
terms of peace, 49-50; British 
loss in, 50; result of war a 
benefit to Boers and the whole 
world, 50-51 

Botha, General, 66, 70; influence 
in South African Union, 449 
et seq.; aids in crushing re- 
bellion in South African 
Union, 460 

British in East Africa and 
Uganda, 206-227 

British East Africa, boundaries, 
206 ; frontiers established, 211; 
administration, 212; pacifica- 
tion and economic develop- 
ment, 212-214; native dis- 
turbances, 214-215; mission- 
ary work, 215-216; white 
colonization, 217 ef seq.; con- 
flict between settlers and 
chartered company, 218 et seq.; 
opposition to Jews and Asiat- 
ics, 219-221; to limited lease- 
hold of land grants, 221-223; 
to favoritism toward natives, 
223-225; to government with- 
out representation, 225-226; 
settlers in the European War, 
227 

British West Africa, 276-298; 
four colonies in, 276-277; see 
Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold 
Coast Colony, and Nigeria. 

Bu Hamara, revolt of, in 
Morocco, 366-369; death of, 
384 n. 



494 



INDEX 



Cairo, convention signed Janu- 
ary 9, 1899, at, 5-6 

Canary Islands, 32 

Cape Colony, see South Africa 
and South African Union 

Cape to Cairo Railway, 196 

Cape Verde Islands, 252-253 

Casement, Roger, report on the 
Congo, 1 51-152 

Central Africa, see Nyasaland 
and Rhodesia 

Central Africa, French in, 335- 

354 . . 

Chad, Lake, environing colonies, 

335 

Chad Military Region, 338, 340 
Chamberlain, Joseph, decides 
to visit South Africa, 53; his 
problems and action there, 
53 et seq.; result of his visit, 
57; proposed Transvaal war 
"contribution," 64-66; pro- 
mise and warning to Boers, 

67 

Chinese labor in South Africa, 
61-63 

Churchill, Winston, on Uganda, 
207-208 

Concentration camps, in Boer 
War, 46; mortality in, 46 and 
n. 

Congo, the, Belgians in, 147- 
172; Congo Free State es- 
tablished, 147; area and 
boundaries, 147-148; history 
for first ten years of twentieth 
century a sad and revolting 
page of history, 149; question 
of Belgium's fitness for 
stewardship of, 150 et seq.; 
report of Mr. Casement on, 
151-152; Lord Cromer on, 
152-153; indignation in Bel- 
gium at Casement and 
Cromer reports, 154; Com- 
mission of Inquiry appointed, 
155; its report, 155-156; King 
Leopold cedes Congo Free 
State to Belgium, 157; atti- 
tude of Great Britain and 
Germany towards the trans- 
fer, 158-159; Belgian promises 



not believed in England, 160; 
death of King Leopold raises 
hopes of awakening of Belgian 
conscience, 162; visit of King 
Albert to Congo, 162; condi- 
tions improving, 163; native 
right to land ownership, 163- 
164; railway construction, 
165-167; products of, 168- 
169; administration and 
finance, 169-171; future of, 
in connection with adjust- 
ments at end of European 
War, 171-172 

Congo Free State, see Congo 

Congo, French, 338 

Congo River, 147 et seq. 

Congress, Afrikander, 44 

Conquest of German African 
colonies, 470-480 

Cromer, Lord, 2; on necessity 
to Egypt of reclamation of 
the Sudan, 4; financial policy 
for the Sudan, 6-7; points 
out need of railway from Nile 
to Red Sea, 1 1 ; on slave trade 
in the Sudan, 12; on Belgian 
misgovernment of Congo, 152- 
I53_; in Egypt, 397-398 et seq.; 
native judgment of his ad- 
ministration, 408-409 

Cyrenaica, Turkey withdraws 
opposition to Italian occupa- 
tion, 123; Italian progress in, 
in 1913, 127 



Dahomey, 312, 313, 317-320 

De Brazza, M., investigation of 
conditions in French Congo 
territories, 343-345 

Delagoa Bay, failure of British 
effort to claim, 265 

Delarey, General, defeats Lord 
Merthuen in Boer War, 48 

Dernberg, Dr., on conditions in 
German East Africa, 240 

De Wet, urges continuance of 
Boer War, 49; leader in re- 
bellion in South African 
Union, 457 et seq. 

Djibouti, 107 



495 



INDEX 



Dulmadoba, British defeat at, 
113 



East Africa, see British East 
Africa, German East Africa, 
Portuguese East Africa 

Education in Algeria, 139-140 

Educational facilities in the 
Sudan, 16-18 

Egypt, necessity to, of reclama- 
tion of the Sudan, 4; conven- 
tion with Great Britain, 
January 19, 1899, 5-6; loans 
to the Sudan, 8-9; under the 
last of the Khedives, 391- 
420; necessity to Great Brit- 
ain of control of Suez Canal, 
393; British enter, 394; inter- 
national status of, 395; real 
control in British hands, 396; 
economic progress, 398; 
"Young Moslem," move- 
ment, 401; Islamic agitation, 
402; Nationalist propaganda, 
402 et seq., 410-413; change in 
Anglo-French relations, 404- 
405; Turkish boundary dis- 
pute, 406; native judgment of 
Lord Cromer's administration, 
408-409; Sir Eldon Gorst 
succeeds Lord Cromer as 
Consul-General, 409; Copts 
secede from Nationalists, 412; 
Colonel Roosevelt's speech, 
413-414; action of the Copts, 
414-417; death of Sir Eldon 
Gorst, 418; Lord Kitchener 
succeeds him, 418; strength- 
ens Britain's hold in Egypt, 
419-420; character and oppor- 
tunities of Khedive Abbas 
Hilmi, 421-423; Khedive de- 
posed, 424 ; entrance of Turkey 
into European War creates 
new situation in Egypt, 425; 
troops sent to, 426; made a 
British Protectorate, 428; 
Turkish attack upon, 430; 
military protection strength- 
ened, 431-432; value of, to 
Great Britain, 432-433; des- 
tiny of, 433; dissatisfaction 

496 



with British rule in, 434-439; 
internal government the real 
problem in, 440 

Elgin, Lord, orders suspension of 
Chinese labor importation in 
South Africa, 69 

El Obeid, railway extended to, 
9, 12 

Eritrea, 119 

European War, outlook in 
Sudan at opening of, 24-25; 
Morocco a principal cause of, 
37^-377 y African problems for 
the Peace Conference, 481- 
491; issues in, and neutral 
attitude towards combatants, 
482, et seq.; American interest 
in a wise settlement of, 490- 
491 



Fashoda, Marchand expedition 

to, 18 _ 
Fashoda incident, 336 
Fez occupied by French, 385 
France, and Sudan boundary 
disputes, 18-19; African 
islands of, 33 ; efforts to secure 
Morocco, 358 et seq.; gets 
Morocco, 374-390; occupa- 
tion of Morocco begins, 380- 
381; negotiations with Spain 
and Germany over Morocco, 
385 et seq.; Morocco placed 
under protection of, 389 
French African Empire, see 

Algeria and Tunis 
French Equatorial Africa, 338 
French in Central Africa, 335- 
354; distribution of territories 
in Central Africa, 335; con- 
quests and territorial adjust- 
ments, 336-337; Chad MiH- 
tary Region, 338, 340; Gabun, 
338-339; Middle Congo Col- 
ony, 338, 339; Ubangi-Shari- 
Chad Colony, 338, 339; mal- 
administration of Congo terri- 
tories, 342 et seq.; abuses of 
Ccnccssionnaire system, 343, 
et 'seq.;_ de Brazza investi- 
gating commission and its 
report, 343-345 ; effect of reve- 



INDEX 



French in Central Africa — Con^d. 
lations of de Brazza report, 
350; effect of Central Africa 
on moral sense of the white 
man, 351-352; qualities neces- 
sary for administrative officers, 
352; reasons for respective 
personnel of French army and 
colonial service, 353-354 

French in West Africa and 
the Sahara, 312-334; Gabun, 
312, 313; Dahomey, 312, 313, 
3i7-32o;Guinea, 312, 313, SH! 
Ivory Coast, 312, 313, 314- 
316, 319; Senegal, 312, 313, 
322; Senegambia, 313, 324; 
the "open door" principle 
and German effort to gain 
commerce of French colonies, 
319-321; cotton culture, 322; 
economic difficulties and terri- 
torial adjustments, 323; Sene- 
gal-Niger Colony, 324-325; 
British and German colonies 
disturb the continuity of 
French territory and influence, 
325-327; colonizing difficul- 
ties, 327-328; economic 
progress, 328-329; West 
Africa a training school for 
army officers and a reser- 
voir of troops, 329-330; fron- 
tiers delimited, 330; pacifica- 
tion of the Sahara, 331-332; 
economic and labor problems, 
332-334 

Gabun, 312, 313, 338-339 

Gambia, 276-277 

Garstin, Sir William, and irriga- 
tion in the Sudan, 20-21 

German African colonies, con- 
quest of, 470-480 

German East Africa, 228-243; 
most important of German 
colonies, 228-229; boundaries, 
229-230; German East 
Africa Company and de- 
velopment of its territories, 
230-231; German colonial 
expansion in Central Africa 
prevented, 232; claim that 



Germany acquired African 
colonies by trickery un- 
founded, 232-233 ; German 
pioneers in East Africa 
discouraged at home, 234 
et seq.; railway development, 
234-237; administrative or- 
ganization of the colony 
started, 237; rigid bureau- 
cracy a handicap, 238; Ger- 
man idea of treatment of 
Mohammedanism, 238-240; 
Dr. Dernberg on conditions in, 
240; increase in trade, 241; 
German pubUc opinion cham- 
pions cause of natives, 241- 
242; abolition of serfdom 
demanded, 242; resistance of 
colony to British invasion, 
243; conquest of, 476-479 

German East Africa Company, 
231 

German Southwest Africa, 173- 
188; boundaries, 173; entrance 
of Germany into Africa, 173- 
174; German method of 
colonization, 174-175; Ger- 
man development hampered 
by British possession of Wal- 
fisch Bay, 176; agriculture 
difficult, 176; Land Bank 
established, 177; metals in, 
178; diamond fields, 178-180; 
German administrative and 
colonization plans, 180-182; 
native uprisings, 183-185; 
transformation effected by 
war, 1 86 ; increase of colonists, 
186; crisis of 19 10, 187; con- 
quered by the South African 
Commonwealth army in 19 15, 
188, 475-476 

German West Africa, 299-311; 
see Togoland, Kamerun 

Germans in Africa, hopeless 
situation of, at opening of 
European War, 470; treat- 
ment of, in British, French, 
and other colonies, 470 et seg^. 

Germany, and the Congo ques- 
tion, 158 et seq.; Rhodes 
believes harmony with, essen- 



32 



497 



INDEX 



Germany — Continued. 

tial to Great Britain's peace 
and to accomplishment of 
plans in Africa, 246-248; 
unpublished treaty with Great 
Britain in 1898, regarding 
Africa, 247; and Great Brit- 
ain drift apart, 248; declares 
war on Portugal, 275; working 
against France in Morocco, 
356 ei seg^.; intervention in 
Morocco, 372 ; negotiations 
with France as to Morocco, 
385 et seq. 

Gladstone, Lord Herbert, first 
Governor of South African 
Union, 443 et seq. 

Gold Coast Colony (British), 
276; Ashanti revolt, 282-283; 
Northern Territories added 
to, 283; valuable market for 
British trade, 284; mining 
wealth, 284-285; Togoland 
conquered, 285 

Gordon College, 14-15 

Gorst, Sir Eldon, report for 1909, 
23-24; Consul-General of 
Egypt, 409; death of, 418 

Great Britain, in the Sudan, i- 
30; drops the Sudan, i; 
vision of reconquest of the 
Sudan, 2 ; problems of colonial 
administrators, 2-3 ; im- 
possibility of direct protec- 
torate over Sudan, 4-5; con- 
vention with Egypt regarding 
Sudan, January 19, 1899, 5-6; 
guarantees interest on loan 
for Sudan, 9; and Sudan 
boundaries, 18-19; African 
islands of, 32-33; dictates 
terms of peace at end of Boer 
War, 49; loss in Boer War, 50; 
policy in Somaliland, 106- 
114; and the Congo question, 
151 et seq.; Portugal in vassal- 
age to, 244-245; Rhodes sees 
peace and prosperity for, and 
accomplishment of African 
plans, only in harmony with 
Germany, 246-247; unpub- 
lished treaty with Germany in 



1898 regarding Africa, 247; 
and Germany drift apart, 248 ; 
agreement with France in 
1904, 248; agreement with 
Russia in 1907,248; alarm in, 
over possibility of Germany 
getting coaling stations and 
naval bases in Portuguese 
colonies, 249-250; willing to 
fight to maintain her world 
supremacy, 251; working 
against France in Morocco, 
356 et seq.; enters Egypt, 394; 
holds real control of Egypt, 
396; economic progress of 
Egypt under, 398; deposes 
Khedive of Egypt, 424; makes 
Egypt a British Protectorate, 
428; South African Union 
most remarkable achievement 
of British statesmanship, 444; 
see also under names of 
British African colonies. 

Grey, Sir Edward, and affairs of 
the Congo, 158, 160 

Guinea, 253-254 

Guinea (French), 312, 313, 314 

Hafid, Sultan of Morocco, nego- 
tiations with France, 383 et 
seq. ; signs treaty with France, 

389 

Hertzog, General, head of ex- 
treme Boer party in South 
Africa, 450 et seq. 

Het Volk, Boer political party, 
70-71 

Het Volk, Pretoria newspaper, 
70 n. 

Hobbhouse, Miss, on concen- 
tration camps, 46 

Hohenlohe, Prince, on treatment 
of Mohammedanism, 238-239 

Hussein Kamel, becomes Sultan 
of Egypt, 428; on destiny of 
Egypt, 433 

Ignorance of uncivilized peoples, 
13 n. 

Indian colonist rights and In- 
dian immigration in South 
Africa, 63-64 



498 



INDEX 



Irrigation in the Sudan, 20-21 
Islands of Africa, 31-42 
Italy and Abyssinia, 97, 99 
Italy, colonial adventures of, in 
Africa, 1 15-129; Risorgimento 
literature of, 116; Italians 
settle in northern Africa, 116; 
occupy strip of Red Sea coast 
and enter Somaliland, 117- 
118; battle of Adowa, 1896, 
118; concentrates attention in 
Tripoli, 120; annexes African 
province of Turkey, 123; war 
with Turkey, 124; treaty of 
Ouchy, 125; progress in Cyre- 
naica in 1913, 127; value of 
Tripoli, 127-128; repercus- 
sion of European War proves 
that Italy had not conquered 
Tripoli, 129 
Ivory Coast Colony (French), 
312, 313, 314-316, 319 

Jameson, Dr., leader of Im- 
perialist or Progressive Oppo- 
sition in South Africa, 53; 
effect of his policy on success 
of South African Union, 451 

Kaiser Wilhelm, see Wilhelm II. 

Kamerun (German colony) , 
boundaries of, 299-300 ; 
acquired by Germany, 304; 
extension of colony, 305-306; 
products, 306; maladminis- 
tration, 307-308; railway and 
telegraphic communication, 
310; education in, 311; con- 
quest of, 476-477 

Khalifa, escapes from Omdur- 
man, 21; killed, 21 

Khartum, railway connection 
with, 11; King's Day at, 27 

Kitchener, Lord, 2, 4, 6, 11; 
opens Gordon College, 14; 
proclamation of August 7, 
1 90 1, 45; declines to consider 
proposals of Vereeniging Con- 
ference, 48; leaves South 
Africa, 50; Consul-General in 
Egypt, 418 



Kruger, President, reception in 
Paris, 44; Kaiser Wilhelm 
refuses to receive, 44 

Labor problems in South Africa, 
58-63 

Ladysmith, relief of, 43 

Leopold II. of Belgium and 
Congo Free State, 147, 150, 
151, 155, 156, 157, 159; death 
of, 1909, 162 

Liberia, 93-96 

Livingstone, David, explorer, 
and Central Africa, 189-190 

Lorenzo IMarques, and contro- 
versy over Transvaal traf&c, 
78-82 

Madagascar, history and de- 
velopment of, 38-42 

Mafeking, relief of, 43 

Mahdism in the Sudan, 21-24 

Manning, Sir William, report on 
Somaliland, III 

Marchand expedition, 18 

Mauritania, 313, 324 

Menelik, Emperor of Abyssinia, 
97, 99, 102, 103 

Methuen, Lord, defeated and 
taken prisoner in Boer War, 
48 

Meux, Lady, will of, 102 n. 

Middle Congo Colony, 338, 339 

Milner, Lord, 47; declines to 
consider proposal of Vereen- 
iging Conference, 48; becomes 
Governor of Transvaal, 50; 
proposition to solve political 
problems in South Africa, 54; 
opposes Transvaal war "con- 
tribution," 66; prosperity of 
Transvaal largely due to, 91; 
advocates idea of imperial 
unity in South Africa, 442 

Mohammedanism, German idea 
of treatment of, 238-240 

Morocco, one of keys to France's 
house in Africa, 134 and n.; 
European rivalry in, before 
Algeciras, 355-373; influence 
of Moroccan affairs on world 
war, 355; French efforts to 



499 



INDEX 



Morocco — Continued. 

secure, 358 et seq.; crisis in, 
begins in 1901, 362; revolt of 
Bu Hamara, 366 et seq.; Anglo- 
French Agreement of 1904, 
368, 369; first German inter- 
vention in, 372; Conference of 
Algeciras arranged, 373; Act 
of Conference futile, 374 et 
seq.; acquired by France, 
374-390; a principal cause of 
the European War, 376-377; 
French occupation begins, 
380-381; Abdul Aziz ab- 
dicates, 383; tactics of Sultan 
Hafid, 383 et seq.; French 
occupy Fez, 385 ; independence 
over, 385; French negotia- 
tions with Spain and Germany, 
385 et seq.; treaty signed 
placing the country under 
French protection, 389; paci- 
fication of, 389-390 

Mullah Mohammed Abdullah, 
rise of power of, in Somaliland, 
109; British policy regarding, 
no; again becomes active, 
III et seq. 

Mustafa Kamel and Nationalist 
agitation in Egypt, 402 et seq. 

Nadji Bey, 123-124 

Natal, the problem of, 82-89; 

see also Soitth Africa and 

South African Union 
National Scouts, hostility to, 

54-55 
Niger, see Senegal-Niger Colony 
Nigeria, boundaries, 276-277; 
made a separate colony in 
1886, 286; administrative 
changes in, 286-287; popula- 
tion and area, 287; agitation 
against liquor traffic in, 288- 
290; conquest of hinterland; 
290-294; cotton-growing ex- 
perimentation, 295-296, his- 
tory of, indicates the secret 
of British success in African 
colonization, 296-298 
Northern Territories added to 
Gold Coast Colony, 283 



Nyasaland, 189-195; boundaries, 
191; population, 192; re- 
cruiting of natives for work 
outside the Protectorate pro- 
hibited, 192-193; native 
antagonism, 193; spread of 
Mohammedanism, 194-195 

Omdurman, battle of, 2 ; Khalifa 
escapes from, 21; celebration 
of the Prophet's birthday in, 
27-30 

Orange Free State, annexed to 
British Empire, 45; constitu- 
tion granted to, 71; elections 
in, 71 ; rebellion in, 457 et seq.; 
see also South Africa, South 
African Union, and Boer War 

Ottoman Empire, British for- 
eign policy in middle of nine- 
teenth century built on its 
maintenance, 392 

Ouchy, treaty of, 125 

Peters, Dr., and development of 
German East Africa, 230 efueg. 

Portugal, national debt of, 271; 
anti-colonial policy of radicals, 
272; attitude in European 
War, 274-275; Germany de- 
clares war on, 275 

Portuguese colonies in Africa, 
244-275; Portugal in vassal- 
age to England, 244-245; 
delimitation of Portuguese 
possessions by other coloniz- 
ing Powers, 244-251; increase 
of German trade in, 249; 
Great Britain alarmed at 
possibility of Germany getting 
coaling stations and naval 
bases in, 249-250; extent of, 
251; enumeration of, 252; 
Cape Verde Islands, 252-253; 
Guinea, 253-254; Sao Thome, 
and Principe, 254-257; Por- 
tuguese West Africa, or 
Angola, 257-263; Portuguese 
East Africa, 263-271 (see 
Portuguese East Africa) ; 
nature of Portuguese colonial 
administration, 271; colonics 
a question of international 



500 



INDEX 



Portuguese colonies — Continued. 
importance, 273-274; pros- 
pect of retention of, 275 

Portuguese East Africa, 263- 
271 ; geographical position, 
263; importance of possession 
by Portugal to Great Britain 
and France, 263-264; failure 
of British attempt to claim 
Delagoa Bay, 265; trade ri- 
valries, 266-267; problem of, 
267-269 ; chartered companies, 
269-270; revenues parasitical, 
270-271 

Portuguese West Africa, or 
Angola, 257-263 

Principe, 254-257 

Railways in Sudan, 8, 9, 11, 12 

Rand, the, 55 

Rebellion in South African 
Union, 454-469 

Rhodes, Cecil, and South Cen- 
tral Africa, 189-191; and 
South African Company, 195; 
Boer War essential to accom- 
plishment of his plans, 197; 
divergent British and Boer 
opinion of, 197 n. ; saw peace for 
Great Britain and realization 
of his African plans only in 
harmony with Germany, 246- 
248; effort to accomplish 
this, 247-248 

Rhodesia, boundaries, 191; be- 
ginning of development of, 
195; environing states and 
their relation to railway and 
other development, 195-198; 
agitation for expropriation of 
Chartered Company, 199- 
202; land problem, 200, 201 
and n. ; development of South- 
ern Rhodesia, 203; efforts to 
attract immigration, 203; 
rapid development of North- 
ern Rhodesia since 1910, 204; 
stays out of South African 
Union, 442 

Risorgimento literature of Italy, 
116 

Roberts, Lord, 43, 44 



Sahara, French in, 324, 325, 
331-332 / 

Sao Thom^, 254-257 

Selborne, Lord, High Com- 
missioner in South Africa, 90 

Senegal, 312, 313, 322 

Senegal-Niger Colony, 324-325 

Senegambia, 313, 324 

Sierra Leone, 276, 282; revenue, 
278; hut tax causes revolts, 
278; secret cannibalistic socie- 
ties, 279-280 

Slave trade in Sudan, 12-13 

Slavery, in Zanzibar, 36-38; 
abolished by French in Mada- 
gascar, 40; defunct in Egypt, 
398 

Sleeping sickness, 208-209 

Smuts, General, supports Gen- 
eral Botha in South African 
Union, 449 et seq.; aids in 
crushing rebellion, 460 

Somaliland, British policy in, 
106-114; location and popula- 
tion, 106; Anglo-French ac- 
cord of 1904, 107; French 
Somaliland, 107; Italian 
Somaliland, 108; geographical 
position of British Somaliland, 
108; rise of power of Mullah 
Mohammed Abdullah in, 109; 
policy regarding Mullah laid 
down, no; Mullah again 
becomes active, iii et seq.; 
British withdraw from interior 
posts. III; Sir William Man- 
ning's report, in; discussion in 
British Parliament and press, 
112-113; British defeat at 
Dulmadoba, 113; dervishes 
still on the offensive in Novem- 
ber, 1 9 14, 114 

South Africa, last years of Boer 
War and reconstruction pe- 
riod, 43-91 ; evolution in, since 
1900, 52; Mr. Chamberlain 
decides to visit, 53; labor 
problem, 53; other problems 
to be settled, 54 et seq.; hos- 
tility to National Scouts in, 
54-55; result of Mr. Chamber- 
lain's visit to, 57; the mines 



501 



INDEX 



South Africa — Continued. 

and the problem of white, 
black, and Chinese labor, 58- 
63; Indian colonist rights and 
Indian immigration, 63-64; 
the Transvaal war "contribu- 
tion," 64-66; granting re- 
sponsible government to the 
Transvaal and Orange Free 
State, 67-72 ; the Taal against 
English in the schools, 72-76; 
conflicting local interests of 
contiguous colonies under the 
same flag hasten union, 77-82 ; 
the problem of Natal, 82-89 

South African Commonwealth, 
army conquers German South- 
west Africa, 188 

South African Company, begins 
development of Rhodesia, 195 ; 
charter extended, 200 

South African Republic an- 
nexed to British Empire, 45 

South African Union, 441-453; 
Colonial Convention, 442 ; 
Union formed by royal pro- 
clamation, December 2, 1909, 
443 ; government ownership of 
railways in, 444-446; negro 
question in, 446-448; war 
between capital and labor, 
448-449; Boers form a major- 
ity of electorate in, 449; politi- 
cal parties and movements in, 
449-453; rebellion in, 454-469; 
martial law proclaimed, 456; 
manifesto of rebels, 458-460; 
Generals Botha and Smuts 
crush rebellion, 460; causes 
of rebellion and attitude of 
Boers, 461 et seq.; racial 
animosity strong, 466; Boers 
in conquest of German South- 
west and East Africa and in 
overseas contingents, 467-468 ; 
anti-British feeling still strong, 
468-469 

Southwest Africa, see German 
Southwest Africa. 

Spain, interests in Morocco and 
negotiations with France, 385 
et seq. 



Spanish colonies in Africa, 115 n. 
State ownership of public utili- 
ties, in the Sudan, 8 n.; in 
South African Union, 444-446 
Suakim abandoned as railway 

terminus, 11 
Sudan, the, Great Britain in, 
1-30; dropped by Great 
Britain, l; battle of Omdur- 
man made possible reconquest 
of, 2; British vision of recon- 
quest of, 2; Great Britain's 
problems in, 2-3; necessity to 
Egypt of reclamation of, 4; 
impossibility of direct British 
Protectorate over, 4-5; con- 
vention of British and Egyp- 
tian governments, January 
19, 1899, 5-6; exact status not 
yet determined, 6; financial 
policy for, 6-7; cost of recon- 
quest, 7; public works, 8-9; 
State ownership of public 
utilities, 8 n.; commercial 
development, 9; railways in, 
11-12; extent of territory, 12; 
slave trade, 12-13; Gordon 
College, 14-15; educational 
facilities, 16-18; boundary 
adjustments, 18-19; irriga- 
tion problem, 20-2 1 ; Sir Regi- 
nald Wingate's administra- 
tion of, 21-30; population, 
23 n.; outlook at opening of 
European War in 1914, 24- 
25; only one revolt against 
the Government, 25-26; 
King's Day in Khartum, 27; 
celebration of the Prophet's 
birthday at Omdurman, 27-30 
Sudan Book of Loyalty, The, 25 
Sudanese, characteristics of, 26 
Sudan, Port, railway terminus 

on Red Sea, 9, 11 
Suez Canal, 393 et seq. 
Swaziland, 83 

Taal, the, against English in 
South African schools, 72-76 

Tana, Lake, advantages for 
irrigation of the Sudan, 20-21 

Tangier, French increase troops 



502 



INDEX 



Tangier — Continued 

at, 371; visit of Kaiser Wil- 
helna to, 372 
Togoland (German colony) , con- 
quered by Gold Coast forces 
and French, 2S5; boundaries 
of, 299; acquirement of, by 
Germany, 300; development 
of, 301-303; cotton growing 
in, 309; railway and tele- 
graphic communication, 310; 
education in, 31 1 ; conquest of, 
472-473 

Transvaal, proposed war con- 
tribution," 64-65; Great 
Britain decides to forego the 
"contribution," 66; respons- 
ible government granted to, 
71; first elections in, 71; 
prosperity of, largely due to 
Lord Milner, 91; rebellion in, 
457 et seq.; see also South 
Africa, South African Union, 
and Boer War. 

Treaty of Vereeniging, see Ver- 
eeniging Conference. 

Tripoli, Italy concentrates atten- 
tion in, 120; lost to Ottoman 
Empire, 121; rivalry of Euro- 
pean nations and Turkey 
regarding, 121 et seq.; Italo- 
Turkish War mostly confined 
to, 124; value of, 127-128; 
repercussion of European War 
proves that Italy had not 
conquered, 129 

Tuaregs, 331 

Tunis, one of keys to Prance's 
houseinAfrica,i34and n.; 141- 
144; see also Algeria and Tunis. 

Turkey, ambitions regarding 
Sudan and Tripoli, 121 et seq.; 
war with Italy, 124; treaty of 
Ouchy, 125; impotence to 
resist Italy's occupation of 
Tripoli, 125 

Turks, feelings towards the 
various European nationali- 
ties, 126 



Ubangi-Shari-Chad Colony, 338, 
339 



Uganda, British Protectorate 
declared, 206; importance of, 
207, 208; sleeping sickness, 
208; progress of Christianity 
in, 209-210; agricultural de- 
velopment, 210 

Union, South African, see South 
African Union. 

United States, and Liberia, 93, 
95; interest in a wise and politic 
settlement of European War, 
490-491 

Vereeniging, Conference at, 48; 
proposals of, declined, 48; 
accepts terms of peace for 
ending of Boer War, 49 

Victoria, Queen, 44 

Victoria Nyanza, Lake, rejected 
for irrigating the Sudan, 20 

Vilonel, General, 47 

Von Trotha tries to "stamp out" 
rebellion in German South- 
west Africa, 184 

Wady Haifa,' railway to Atbara, 
II 

Walfisch Bay, possession of, by 
British hampers German de- 
velopment in Southwest 
Africa, 176 

Wellcome Laboratories, 15 

West Africa and the Sahara, 
French in, 312-334; see also 
British, German, and Portu- 
guese West Africa. 

Wilhelm II., Kaiser, refuses to 
receive President Kruger, 44; 
visit to Tangier, 372 

Wingate, Sir Reginald, 6; 
on Lord Kitchener, 14 n.; 
anticipates threatened attack 
of Sultan All, 19 n.; his ad- 
ministration of the Sudan, 21- 
30 

"Young Egypt" party, 23 
"Young Moslems" in Egypt, 401 
"Young Turks," 122 et seq. 

Zanzibar, history and develop- 
ment of, 34-38 
Zulnland, 84 et seg. 



503 



LiiHP^^"^ 






Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: IVlagnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date; IVIay 2003 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberiy Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



